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Les diagrammes suivants lllustrent la mAthode. by errata led to ent une pelure. fapon d 1 2 3 32X 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 <: -/ • ■ .i!' 1 4- '\ 1 ) » 1 1 WINTER STUDIES AND SUMMER RAMBLES. ^ . *, a II 1 1 ! ■I m 4 i P ■ I IT' •^ 9? t WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. I. CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN: AN ANALYSIS OF THE FEMALE CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS. Two vols. Third Edition. II. MEMOIRS OF CELEBRATED FEMALE SOVEREIGNS ; Two vols. New Edition. III. VISITS AND SKETCHES AT HOME AND ABROAD. Three vols. New Edition. Preparing for PublicatUm, DRAMAS; BY HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS AMELIA OF SAXONY. THANSLATBD FROM THB OBRMAIV, WfTH AN INTRODUCTION ANP ILLUSTBATIVB NOTBS, BY MrI. JaMBSON. WINTER STUDIES AND SUMMER RAMBLES IN CANADA. BY MRS. JAMESON, AUTHOR OF "CHARACTERISTICS OP WOMEN," "FEMALE SOVEREIONfi," &c. (Ste. si 2eib, unb .tunfl, unb ®d)cr(i. Rahei.. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. ■I LONDON: SAUNDERfe AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 1838. *fl V. I LONDON : IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. CONTENTS I'U OF THE FIRST VOLUME. WINTER STUDIES. Toronto A Winter Journey Winter Visita . Sleighing Visit of Indians Winter Miseries Clergy Reserves The Tragedy of Correggio Qerman Actreaies Sleigh-journey Niagara in Winter Trees in Canada Society in Toronto Politics and Parties Fire at Toronto A true Story . Goethe's Tasso, Iphigenia, and Clavigo A Soldier of Fortune . Page I 6 13 21 23 27 30 40 49 64 78 94 98 101 107 113 119 126 1 i tV--| i i .■■M—.T.fj.iria*f> V! CONTENTS. I- Music and MuBicians Constitution of Upper Gonad u Prorogation of the House of Assembly Acts of the Legislature in 1 B37 On the Female Character Goethe and Ekermann Goethe's lost Love Goethe's Table Talk . His Ideas on the Position of Women . Criminal Calendar of Toronto . Grillparzer's Sappho and Medea Lake Ontario . . . . Return of Spring Village of the Credit . Erindale . . . . 134 145 i:)l 173 im I .'Hi •jtu ■_>5b' 291 •292 293 299 In venturing to place before the public these " fragments" of a journal addressed to a friend, I cannot but feel considerable misgiving as to the reception such a work is likely to meet with, particularly at this time, when the country to which it partly refers is the subject of so much difference of opinion, and so much animosity of feeUng. This little book, the mere result of much thoughtful idleness and many an idle thought, has grown up insensibly out of an accidental promise. It never was in- tended to go before the world in its present crude and desultory form ; and I am too sensible b 3 'f PREFACE. M v\ PREFACE. r of its many deficiencies, not to feel that some explanation is due to that public, which has hitherto regarded my attempts in literature with 80 much forbearance and kindness. While in Canada, I was thrown into scenes and regions hitherto undescribed by any tra- veller, (for the northern shores of Lake Huron are almost new ground,) and into relations with the Indian tribes, such as few European women of refined and civilised habits have ever risked, and none have recorded. My intention was to have given the result of what I had seen, and the reflections and comparisons excited by so much novel experience, in quite a different form — and one less obtrusive : but owing to the intervention of various circumstances, and occu- pation of graver import, I found myself reduced to the alternative of either publishing the book as it now stands, or of suppressing it altogether. Neither the time nor the attention necessary to remodel the whole were within my own power. In preparing these notes for the press, much has been omitted of a personal nature, but far too IMIEFACE. VII much of such irrelevant matter still remains ; — far too much which may expose me to misappre- hension, if not even to severe criticism; but now, as heretofore, I throw myself upon ** the merciful construction of good women/' wishing it to be understood that this little book, such as it is, is more particularly addressed to my own sex. I would fain have extracted, altogether, the impertinent leaven of egotism which necessarily mixed itself up with the journal form of writ- ing: but, in making the attempt, the whole work lost its original character — lost its air of reality, lost even its essential truth, and what- ever it might possess of the grace of ease and pictorial animation : it became flat, heavy, didac* tic. It was found that to extract the tone of personal feeling, on which the whole series of action and observation depended, was like draw- ing the thread out of a string of beads — the chain of linked ideas and experiences fell to pieces, and became a mere unconnected, in- congruous heap. I have been obliged to leave the flimsy thread of sentiment to sustain the / ' Vlll PREFACE. i facts and observations loosely strung together ; feeling strongly to what it may expose me, but having deliberately chosen the alternative, pre- pared, of course, to endure what I may appear to have defied ; though, in truth, defiance and assurance are both far from me. These notes were written in Upper Canada, but it will be seen that they have little reference to the politics or statistics of that unhappy and mis« managed, but most magnificent country. Subse- quently I made a short tour through Lower Canada, just before the breaking out of the late revolt. Sir John Colborne, whose mind appeared to me cast in the antique mould of chivalrous ho- nour, and whom I never heard mentioned in either province but with respect and veneration, was then occupied in preparing against the exigency which he afterwards met so effectively. I saw of course something of the state of feeling on both sides, but not enough to venture a word on the subject. Upper Canada appeared to me loyal in spirit, but resentful and repining under the sense of injury, and suffering from the 4> PREFACE. IX total absence of all sympathy on the part of the English government with the condition, the wants, the feelings, the capabilities of the people and country. I do not mean to say that this want of sympathy now exists to the same extent as formerly ; it hag been abruptly and painfully awakened, but it has too long existed. In climate, in soil, in natural productions of every kind, the upper province appeared to me superior to the lower province, and well cal- culated to become the inexhaustible timber-yard and granary of the mother country. The want of a sea-port, the want of security of property, the general mismanagement of the government lands — these see^ ?d to me the most pro- minent causes of the physical depression of this splendid country, while the poverty and deficient education of the people, and a plen- tiful lack of public spirit in those who were not of the people, seemed sufficiently to ac- count for the moral depression everywhere visible. Add a system of mistakes and mal- administration, not chargeable to any one indivi- m •t ' r. ; :•■•» , 1 % I. > X PREFACE. dual, or any one measure, but to the whole tendency of our Colonial government ; the per- petual change of officials, and change of mea- sures ; the fluctuation of principles destroying all public confidence, and a degree of ignorance relative to the country itself, not credible except to those who may have visited it; — add these three things together, the want of knowledge, the want of judgment, the want of sympathy, on the part of the government, how can we be sur- prised at the strangely anomalous condition of the governed ? — that of a land absolutely teem- ing with the richest capabilities, yet poor in population, in wealth, and in energy ! But I feel I am getting beyond my depth. Let us hope that the reign of our young Queen will not be- gin, like that of Maria Theresa, with the loss of one of her fairest provinces ; and that hereafter she may look upon the map of her dominions without the indignant blushes and tears with which Maria Theresa, to the last moment of her life, contemplated the map of her dismembered empire, and regretted her lost Silesia. PREFACE. XI 1 have abstained generally from politics and personalities; from the former, because such discussions are foreign to my turn of mind and above my capacity, and from the latter on prin- ciple ; and I wish it to be distinctly understood, that whenever I have introduced any personal details, it has been with the express sanction of those most interested, — I allude particularly to the account of Colonel Talbot and the family at the Sault Ste. Marie. For the rest, 1 have only to add, that on no subject do I wish to dictate an opinion, or assume to speak as one having authority : my utmost ambition extends no farther than to suggest matter for inquiry and reflection. If this little book contain mis- takes, they will be chastised and corrected, and I shall be glad of it. If it contain but one truth, and that no bigger than a grain of mustard-seed, it will not have been cast into ' the world in vain, nor will any severity of criticism make me, in such a case, repent of hav- ing published it, even in its present undigested and, I am afraid, unsatisfactory form. i I; i\ 4 ■x: -■ . 'i ^1 ill! i Hi! i lit V'f II )! i 1 > i i And over that same door was likewise writ, Be bold, Be bold, and everywhere Be bold ; That much she mus'd, yet could not construe it By any riddling skill or common wit: At last she spied at that room's upper end Another iron door, on which was writ. Be not too bold. , > Faebie Queen, book iii. V i !j V I • :{ WINTER STUDIES IN CANADA. Sind denn die Baume auch so trostlos, so verzwei. flungs veil in ihrem Winter, wie das Herz in seiner Verlassenheit ? Bettine v. Arnim. Dec. 20th. Toronto, — such is now the sonorous name of this our sublime capital, — was, thirty years ago, a wilderness, the haunt of the bear and deer, with a little, ugly, inefficient fort, which, how- ever, could not be more ugly or inefficient than the present one. Ten years ago Toronto was a village, with one brick house and four or five VOL. I. B M ' :r ill I HI 5 w ^ii ■ ii ii ii^^ji 4Hi $ i I i-'- •■ a WINTER STUDIES. hundred inhabitants ; five years ago it became a city, containing about five thousand inhabitants, and then bore the name of Little York ; now it is Toronto, with an increasing trade, and a po- pulation of ten thousand people. So far I write as per book. What Toronto may be in summer, I cannot tell ; they say it is a pretty place. At present its appearance to me, a stranger, is most strangely mean and melancholy. A little ill-built town on low land, at the bottom of a frozen bay, with one very ugly church, without tower or steeple ; some government offices, built of staring redbrick, in the most tasteless, vulgar style imaginable ; three feet of snow all around; and the grey, sullen, wintry lake, and the dark gloom of the pine forest bounding the prospect ; such seems Toronto to me now. I did not expect much ; but for this I was not prepared. Perhaps no preparation could have prepared me, or softened my present feelings. I will not be unjust if I can help it, nor querulous. If I look into my own heart, I find that it is regret for what I TORONTO. 3 have left and lost — the absent, not the present — which throws over all around me a chill, colder than that of the wintry day— a gloom, deeper than that of the wintry night. This is all very dismal, very weak, perhaps ; but I know* no better way of coming at the truth, than by observing and recording faithfully the impressions made by objects and characters on my own mind — or, rather, the impress they receive from my own mind — shadowed by the clouds which pass over its horizon, taking each tincture of its varying mood — until they emerge into light, to be corrected, or at least modified, by observation and comparison. Neither do I know any better way than this of conveying to the mind of another, the truth, and nothing but the truth, if not the whole truth. So I shall write on. Hitherto I have not been accused of looking on the things of this world through a gUss darkly, but rather of a contrary tendency. What have I done with my spectacles couleur de rose? — the cheerful faith which sustained me through far worse than anything I can antici- B 2 ) ■ m;;i ,■) '1 ■ml WINTER STUDIES. li! > ■ t pate here ; — the desire to know, the impatience to learn, the quick social sympathies, the readi* ness to please and to be pleased, — derived, per- haps, from my Irish blood, and to which I have owed so much of comfort when I have most needed it, so much of enjoyment when least I could have hoped for it — what ! and are all for- gotten, all gone'"^ Yet am I not quite an icicle, nor an oyster — I almost wish I were ! No, worst of all, is this regretful remembrance of friends who loved me, this heart-sick longing after home, and country, and all familiar things and dear domestic faces ! I am like an uprooted tree, dying at the core, yet with a strange unreason- able power at times of mocking at my own most miserable weakness. Going to bed in tears last night, after saying my prayers for those far away across that terrible Atlantic, an odd re- membrance flashed across me of that Madame de BouflBers, who declared " avec tant de serieux et de sentiment," that she would consent to go as ambassadress to England, only on the condition of taking with her " mngt-cinq ou TORONTO. 5 vingt'Siv de ses amis intimes,** and sixty or eighty persons who were ahsolument necessaires a son bonheur. The image of graceful imper- tinence thus conjured up, made me smile — but am I so unlike her in this fit of unreason? Everywhere there is occupation for the rational and healthy intellect, everywhere good to be done, duties to be performed, — everywhere the mind is, or should be, its own world, its oun country, its own home at least. How many fine things I could say or quote, in prose or in rhyme, on this subject ! But in vain I conjure up Philosophy, " she will not come when I do call for her;" but in her stead come thronging sad and sorrowful recollections, and shivering sensations, all telling me that I am a stranger among strangers, miserable inwardly and out- wardly,— and that the thermometer is twelve de- grees below zero ! There is much, too, in first impressions, and as yet I have not recovered from the pain and annoyance of my outset here. My friends at New York expended much eloquence — elo- f^ \4 A. ill • ! I I!; I: WINTER STUDIES. quence wasted in vain ! — in endeavouring to dibsuade me from a winter journey to Canada. I listened, and was grateful for their solicitude, but must own I did not credit the picture they drew of the difficulties and diaagrimena I was destined to meet by the way. I had chosen, they said, (Heaven knows I did not chooae it,) the very worst season for a journey through the state of New York ; the usual facilities for travelling were now suspended ; a few weeks sooner the rivers and canals had been open ; a few weeks later the roads, smoothed up with snow, had been in sleighing order; — now, the navigation was frozen, and the roads so broken up as to be nearly impassable. Then there was only a night boat on the Hudson, " to proceed," as the printed paper set forth, " to Albany, or aa far aa the ice permitted,^ All this, and more, were represented to me — and with so much apparent reason and real feeling, and in words and tones so difficult to resist ! But thou^^h I could appreciate the kindness of those persuasive words, they brought no definite idea to my mind ; I could A WINTER JOURNEY. form no notion of difficulties which by fair words, presence of mind, and money in my pocket, could not be obviated. I had travelled half over the continent of Europe, often alone, and had never yet been in circumstances where these availed not. In my ignorance I could conceive none ; but I would not lightly counsel a similar journey to any one — certainly not to a woman. As we ascended the Hudson in the night, I lost, of course, the view of that superb scenery which I was assured even winter could not divest of all its beauty — rather clothed it in a different kind of beauty. At the very first blush of morning, I escaped from the heated cabin, crowded with listless women and cla- morous children, and found my way to the deck. I was surprised by a spectacle as beautiful as it was new to me. The Catskill mountains which we had left behind us in the night, were still visible, but just melting from the view, robed in a misty purple light, while our magnificent steamer — the prow armed with a sharp iron 1 ' t ! u i .» !|: M:( 8 WINTER STUDIES. ■ * i.i M iHi sheath for the purpose — was crashing its way through solid ice four inches thick, which seemed to close behind us into an adhesive mass, so that the wake of the vessel was not distinguished a few yards from the stern : yet in the path thus opened, and only seemingly closed, followed at some little distance a beau- tiful schooner and two smaller steam-vessels. I walked up and down, from the prow to the stem, refreshed by the keen frosty air, and the excitement caused by various picturesque effects, on the ice-bound river and the frozen shores, till we reached Hudson. Beyond this town it was not safe for the boat to ad vance, and we were still thirty miles below Al- bany. After leaving Hudson, (with the excep- tion of the rail-road between Albany and Utica,) it was all heavy, weary work ; the most pain- fully fatiguing journey I ever remember. Such were the roads, that we were once six hours going eleven miles. What was usually a day's journey from one town, or one good inn, to an- other, occupied sometimes a day and a night, or even two days. A WINTErt JOURNEV. 'hi One dark night, I remember, as the sleet and rain were falling fast and our Extra was slowly dragged by wretched brutes of horses through what seemed to me ** sloughs of despond," some package ill stowed on the roof, which in the American stages presents no resting-place either for man or box, fell off. The driver alighted to fish it out of the mud. As there was some delay, a gentleman seated opposite to me put his head out of the window to inquire the cause ; to whom the driver's voice replied, in an angry tone, " I say, you mister, don't you sit jabbering there, but lend a hand to heave these things aboard I" To my surprise, the gentle- man did not appear struck by the insolence of this summons, but immediately jumped out and lent his assistance. This is merely the manner of the people ; the driver intended no insolence, nor was it taken as such, and my fellow-tra- vellers could not help laughing at my sur- prise. After six days and three nights of this travel- ling, unrelieved by companionship, or interest B 5 I n '\ i^i 'I'll i llii 10 WINTER STUDIES. V 'i; '■ ! ■; i of any kind, I began to sink with fatigue. The first thing that roused me was our arrival at the ferry of the Niagara river, at Queenston, about seven miles below the Falls. It was a dark night, and while our little boat was tossed in the eddying waters, and guided by a light to the opposite shore, we could distinctly hear the deep roar of the cataract, filling, and, as it seemed to me, shaking the atmosphere around us. That mighty cataract, the dream and vision of my childhood and youth, so near — yet unseen,— making itself thus heard and felt, — like Job's vision, consciously present, yet unrevealed and undiscemed ! You may believe that I woke up very decidedly from my lethargy of weari- ness to listen to that mysterious voice, which made my blood pause and thrill. At Queenston we slept, and proceeded next morning to the town of Niagara on the shore of Lake Ontario. Now, as we had heard, the navigation on the lake had ceased, and we looked for nothing better than a further journey of one hundred miles round the head of the lake, and by the A WINTER JOURNEY. 11 most execrable roads, instead of an easy pas- sage of thirty miles across from shore to shore. But Fortune, seized with one of those freaks which, when we meet them in books, we pro- nounce improbable and unnatural, (and she has played me many such, some good, some bad,) had ordered matters otherwise. A steam-ves sel, making a last trip, had called accidentally at the port, and was just going off; the paddles were actually in motion as I and my baggage together were hurried — aXvao^t Jlung— on board. No sooner there, than I threw myself down in the cabin utterly overwhelmed with fatigue, and sank at once into a profound and dreamless sleep. How long I slept I knew not : they roused me suddenly to tell me we were at Toronto, and, not very well able to stand, I hurried on deck. The wharf was utterly deserted, the arrival of the steam-boat being accidental and unexpected ; and as I stepped out of the boat I sank ankle- deep into mud and ice. The day was in- tensely cold and damp ; the sky lowered sulkily. ill i 11! I M m n •Ml 12 WINTER STUDIES. ll I i I! I ! I t 1 I,' alarmed, but they may be very excellent people for all that. I returned trembling and shudder- ing, chilled outwardly and inwardly, for none of my fur defences prevailed against the frost and the current of icy air, through which we glided, or rather flew, along the smooth road. The appearance of the town was much more cheerful than on my first landing, but still me- lancholy enough. There was little movement or animation ; few people in the streets ; some good shops and some brick houses, but the greater number of wood. The very different appear- ance of the town and bay in the summer season, the blueness of the water, the brightness of the verdure, the throng of vessels, the busy crowds along the piers, were often described to me, but without conveying to my mind any very definite or cheering picture. The very novelty of the scene before me, by strongly impressing my imagination, seemed to shut out all power of anticipation. The choice of this site for the capital of the Upper Province was decided by the fine bar- iFi TORONTO. 15 hour, the only one between Burlington Bay and Cobourg, a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. General Simcoe, the first governor after the division of the two provinces, and a man of great activity and energy of character, entertained the idea of founding a metropolis. At that time the head quarters of the govern- ment were at Niagara, then called Newark, on the opposite shore ; but this was too near the frontiers to be a safe position. Nor is Toronto much safer : from its low situation, and the want of any commanding height in the neighbour- hood, it is nearly defenceless. In case of a war with America, a few boats sent from the oppo- site coast of New York could easily lay the fort and town in ashes ; and, in fact, during the last war, in 1813, such was the fate of both. But the same reasons which rendered the place in- defensible to us, rendered it untenable for the enemy, and it was immediately evacuated. An- other objection was, and is, the unhealthiness of its situation, — in a low swamp not yet wholly drained, and with large portions of uncleared iri P m I i f =|:|: il ;||j lUr 16 WINTER STUDIES. !l: land immediately round it : still the beauty and safety of the spacious harbour, and its central position about half-way between Lake Huron and the frontier line of Lower Canada, have fixed its rank as capital of the province and the seat of the legislature. When the engineer, Bouchette, was sent by Ge- neral Simcoe to survey the site, (in 1793,) it was a mere swamp, a tangled wilderness; the birch, the hemlock and the tamarac-trees were grow- ing down to the water's edge, and even into the lake. I have been told that Toronto, the Indian appellation of the whole district, signi- fies trees growing out of water. Colonel Bou- chette says, that at this time the only vestige of humanity for a hundred miles on every side was one solitary wigwam on the shore, the dwelling of a few Missassagua Indians. Three years after- wards, when the Due de Rochefoucauld was here, the infant metropolis consisted of afortand twelve miserable log huts, the inhabitants of which, as the duke tells us, bore no good reputa-on. The town was, however, already marked out in !i}»: TORONTO. 17 streets running parallel with the shore of the bay for about two miles, and crossed by others at right angles. It is a pity that while they were about it, they did not follow the example of the Americans, in such cases, and make the principal streets of ample width ; some hundred feet, or even furlongs, more or less, would have made little difference where the wild unowned forest extended, for all they knew, from the lake to the north pole, — now, it would not be so easy to amend the error. King- street, the principal street, looks narrow, and will look narrower when the houses are higher, better, and more regularly built. I perceive that in laying out the fashionable or west-end of the city, they have avoided the same mistake. A wide space between the building lots and Lake Ontario has been reserved very properly as a road or esplanade, but I doubt whether even this be wide enough. One of the most curious and inexplicable phenomena connected with these immense inland seas is the gradual rise of the waters : and even within these few if % iU!i I I'i, ij: i!' ii' I ■ I I! •11 18 WINTER STUDIES. years, as I am informed, great part of the high bank has been washed away, and a carriage-road at the foot of it along the shore has been wholly covered. If this process goes on, and at the same rate, there must be a solid embankment, or quay, raised as a barrier against the en- croaching waters, or the esplanade itself will in time disappear. Thus much of knowledge I gained in the course of my cold drive — bitter cold it was every way, and I returned without being much com- forted or edified by my visits. New Year's Day — colder than ever. This morning the thermometer stood at eighteen de- grees below zero, and Dr. R told me that some chemical compounds in his laboratory had frozen in the night, and burst the phials in which they were contained. They have here at Toronto the custom which prevails in France, Germany, the United States, (more or less everywhere, I believe, but in NEW YEARS DAY. 19 England,) of paying visits of congratulation on the first day of ihe year. This custom, which docF not apparently harmonise with the man- ners of the people, has been borrowed from the French inhabitants of Lower Canada. I received this morning about thirty gentle- men— to gentlemen luckily for me the obligation is confined — two-thirds of whom I had never seen nor heard of before, nor was there any one to in- troduce them. Some of them, on being ushered into the room, bowed, sat down, and after the lapse of two minutes, rose and bowed themselves out of the room again without uttering a syllable: all were too much in a hurry and apparently far too cold to converse. Those who did speak, complained, sensibly enough, of the unmeaning duty imposed on them, and the danger incurred by running in and out from over-heated rooms into the fierce biting air, and prophesied to themselves and others sore throats, and agues, and fevers, and every ill that flesh is heir to. I could but believe and condole. These strange faces appeared and disappeared in succession so i i if it ! I ••: 1 20 WINTER STUDIES. \\\i \u fill P. i- rapidly, tliat I was almost giddy, but there were one or two among the number, whom even in five minutes' conversation I disthiguished at once as superior to the rest, and original minded, thinking men. In London society I met with many men whose real material of mind it was difficult to discover — either they had been smoothed and polished down by society, or education had overlaid their understanding with stuccoed ornaments, and figures historical and poetical — very pretty to look at — but the coarse brick-work or the rotten lath and plaster lay underneath : there being in this new country far less of conventional manner, it was so much the easier to tell at once the brick from the granite and the marble. Jan. 12. We have had another considerable fall of snow, and the weather is milder. They say here that the weather never remains the same for more than three days together ; and all agree V SLEIGHING. 21 that the atmospherical changes are violent anti sudden at all seasons. Yet the medical men assure me that the climate of Canada, take it altogether, is one of the healthiest in the world, though the immediate vicinity of Toronto be for the present, from local circumstances, an excep- tion. The winter in the upper province is infinitely less severe and trying than the same season in Lower Canada. { Jan. 14. It should seem that this wintry season, which appears to me so dismal, is for the Canadians the season of festivity, and if I were not sick and a stranger, —if I had friends near me, I should really enjoy it. Now is the time for visiting, for sleighing excursions, for all intercourse of busi- ness and friendship, for balls in town, and dances in farm-houses, and courtships and marriages, and prayer-meetings and assignations of all sorts. In summer, the heat and the mosquitos render travelling disagreeable at best ; in spring the i ', 111 ft If i ! 1 I 'II ill I fll 1 1 I •22 WINTER STUDIES. roads are absolutely impassable ; in autumn tbere is too much agricultural occupation : but in winter the forests are pervious; the roads present a smooth surface of dazzling snow ; the settlers in the woods drive into the towns, supply themselves with stores and clothing, and fresh meat, the latter a luxury which they can seldom obtain in the summer. I stood at my window to-day watching the sleighs as they glided past. They are of all shapes and sizes. A few of the carriage-sleighs are well appointed and hand- some. The market-sleighs are often two or three boards nailed together in form of a wooden box upon runners ; some straw and a buffalo skin or blanket serve for the seat ; barrels of flour and baskets of eggs fill up the empty space. Others are like cars, and others, called cutters^ are mounted on high runners, like sleigh phae- tons ; these are sported by the young men and officers of the garrison, and require no incon- siderable skill in driving : however, as I am as- sured, they are overturned in the snow not above once in a quarter of an hour, and no Ill VISIT OF INDIANS. 20 harm and much mirth ensues : but the wood sleighs are my delight ; a large platform of boards is raised upon runners, with a few upright poles held together at top by a rope, the logs of oak, pine, and maple, are then heaped up to the height of six or seven feet. On the summit lie a couple of deer frozen stiff, their huge antlers project- ing in a most picturesque fashion, and on these again, a man is seated with a blanket round him, his furred cap drawn down upon his ears, and his scarlet woollen comforter forming a fine bit of colour. He guides with a pole his two pa- tient oxen, the clouds of vapour curling troni their nostrils into the keen frosty air — the whole machine, in short, as wildly picturesque as the grape wagons in Italy, though, to be sure, the associations are somewhat different. > i Jan. 16. This morning, betui c 1 was quite dressed, a singular visit was announced. I had expressed to my friend Mr. Hepburne a wish to see some u:\J\ n lil ! ' I I - Hi! 1 ft I ! « ! i ', I ■ I ■ .■ 1 I < I V . t 24 WINTER STUDIES. of the aborigines of the country; he had the kindness to remember my request, and Colonel Givins, the principal Indian agent, had accord- ingly brought some Indians to visit us. Those to whom the appearance of these people is fa- miliar and by no means interesting, were sur- prised by a curiosity which you will at least allow was very natural and feminine. The party consisted of three— a chief named the White Deer, and two of his friends. The chief wore a blanket coat, and leggings, and a blanket hood with a peak from which depended a long black eagle plume ; stout mocazins or shoes of undressed deer-skin completed his attire : he had about fifty strings of blue wampum round his neck. The other two were similarly dressed, with the exception of the wampum and the feathers. Before I went down I had thrown a chain of wampum round my neck, which seemed to please them. Chairs being presented, they sat down at once, (though, as Colonel Givins said, they would certainly have preferred the floor,) and answered with a grave and quiet dignity the I VISIT OF INDIANS. 'JJ compliments and questions addressed to them. Their deportment was taciturn, and self-possessed, and their countenances melancholy ; that of the chief was by far the most intelligent. They in- formed me that they were Chippewas from the neighbourhood of Lake Huron; that the hunting season had been unsuccessful ; that their tribe was suffering the extremity of hunger and cold ; and that they had come to beg from their Great Father the Governor rations of food, and a supply of blankets for their women and children. They had walked over the snow, in their snow- shoes, from the Lake, one hundred and eighty miles, and for the last forty-eight hours none of them had tasted food. A breakfast of cold meat, bread, and beer, was immediately ordered for them ; and though they had certainly never beheld in their lives the arrangement of an European table, and were besides half famished, they sat down with unembarrassed tranquillity, and helped themselves to what they wished, with the utmost propriety — only, after one or two trials, using their own knives and fingers in VOL. I. c !,-il ■4k k I! li '■ IM r,i • I: f i ' I li : I I. ' I hiii; f r. ■ ! 26 WINTER STUDIES. preference to the table knife and fork. After they had eaten and drunk sufficiently, they were conducted to the government-house to receive from the governor presents of blankets, rifles, and provisions, and each, on parting, held out his hand to me, and the chief, with a grave earnest- ness, prayed for the blessing of the Great Spirit on me and my house. On the whole, the im- pression they left, though amusing and exciting from its mere novelty, was melancholy. The sort of desperate resignation in their swarthy countenances, their squalid, dingy habiliments, and their forlorn story, filled me with pity and, I may add, disappointment ; and all my previ- ous impressions of the independent children of the forest are for the present disturbed. These are the first specimens I have seen of that fated race, with which I hope to become better acquainted before I leave the country. Notwith- standing all I have heard and read, I have yet but a vague idea of the Indian character ; and the very different aspect under which it has been represented by various travellers, as well WINTER MISERIES. 27 as writers of fiction, adds to the diflSculty of forming a correct estimate of the people, and more particularly of the true position of their women. Colonel Givins, who has passed thirty years of his life among the north-west tribes, till he has become in habits and language almost identified with them, is hardly an impartial judge. He was their interpreter on this occa- sion, and he says that there is as much dif- ference between the customs and language of different nations, the Chippewas and Mohawks, for instance, as there is between any two na- tions of Europe. January 16. Some philosopher has said or written, that our good and bad qualities, our virtues and our vices, depend more on the influence of climate, than the pride of civilised humanity would be willing to allow ; and this is a truth or truism, which for my own part I cannot gainsay — yet which I do not much like to believe. What- c 2 '1 H in : i I 1 ■ 'i| I, iii- (■ ir 1 4 i I 1! 28 WINTER STUDIES. ;:i: ■ : I ! ever may be the climate in which the human being is born or reared, can he not always by moral strength raise himself above its degrading, or benumbing, or exciting influence ? and yet more, rather than less, easily, when, at a mature age and with habits formed, he is subjected accidentally to such influences ? Is there most wisdom, in such a case, in passively assimilating ourselves, our habits, and our feelings, to ex- ternal circumstances, or resisting and com- bating them, rather to defend the integrity of our own individual being, than with the hope of changing or controlling the physical or social influences around us ? How I might have settled this question with myself, long ago, when in possession of the health and energy and trusting spirit of my young years, I know — but now it is too late. I could almost wish myself a dormouse, or a she- bear, to sleep away the rest of this cold, cold winter, and wake only with the first green leaves, the first warm breath of the summer wind. I shiver through the day and through i WINTER MISEUIF.S. 29 the night ; and, like poor Harry Gill, " my teeth they chatter, chatter still ;" and then at intervals I am burned up with a dry hot fever : this is what my maid, a good little Oxfordshire girl, calls the hager^ (the ague,) more properly the lake fever, or cold fever. From the parti- cular situation of Toronto, the disorder is very prevalent here in the spring : being a stranger, and not yet acclimattei it has attacked me thus unseasonably. Bark is the general and unfailing remedy. The cold is at this time so intense, that the ink freezes while I write, and my fingers stiffen round the pen ; a glass of water by my bed-side, within a few feet of the hearth, (heaped with logs of oak and maple kept burning all night long,) is a solid mass of ice in the morning. God help the poor emigrants who are yet un- prepared against the rigour of the season ! — yet this is nothing to the climate of the lower province, where, as we hear, the thermometer has been thirty degrees below zero. I lose all heart to write home, or to register a reflection % 1 '.! li 1 • I "!> : fi' ! . ; |t * ■ ■ ^ i Ui ,■ 1 V^ ^:; I . . f^' I >| 1-.M U; 'ill . '• ■I ^ li 14 '1 t; : 30 WINTER STUDIESt or a feeling ; — thought stagnates in my head as the ink in my pen — and this will never do ! — I must rouse myself to occupation ; and if I can- not find it without, I must create it from within. There are yet four months of winter and leisure to be disposed of. How ? — I know not ; but they must be employed, not wholly lost. The House of Assembly is now sitting, and the question at present agitated is the appro- priation of the clergy reserves — a question momentous to the future welfare of the colony, and interesting to every thinking mind. There are great differences of opinion, and a good deal of bitterness of spirit, prevailing on this subject, so often brought under discussion, and as yet unsettled. When Upper Canada was separated from the Lower Province (in 1791) one-seventh part of the lands was set apart for the main- tenance of the clergy, under the name of Clergy Reserves : and the Church of England, as being the church by law established, claimed CLERGY RESERVES. 31 the entire appropriation of these lands. The Roman Catholics, under the old conditions by which the maintenance of their church was pro- vided for on the conquest of the colony, also put in their claim, as did the Presbyterians on ac- count of their influence, and the Methodists on account of their number. The inhabitants, meantime, through the legislature, petitioned the government that the whole of the clergy reserves should be appropriated to the purposes of education, for which the funds already pro- vided are wholly inadequate, and are ill ma- naged besides — but of this hereafter. If the question had been left to be settled by the House of Assembly then sitting, the Radicals of 1832, there is no doubt that such would have been the destination of these reserves, which now consist of about two millions of acres out of fourteen millions, settled or in course of cultivation, and indefinitely increasing as more and raore land is redeemed from the unmea- sured, interminable forest. The government at home sent over to the legislature here a Ir^ i^ ' i . !'!:li I,:' IT 3 ■; i ■4^ ■V ' it. m f'' fi la! 82 WINTER STUDIES. cession of the crown lands, and a recom- mendation to settle the whole question ; but we have now a House of Assembly differently con stituted from that of 1832, and the prepon- derance is altogether the other way. I am now aware that there exist three parties on this subject: — First, those who would appropriate the whole of these reserves solely to the maintenance of the Church of England. This is a small but zealous party — not so much insisting on their own claim, as on the absolute inconsistency and unrighteousness of allowing any other claim. The Church of England, as the archdeacon ob- served last night, being the only true church, as well as the church by law established, to maintain any other religion or form of religion, at the expense of the state, is a manifest rebel- lion against both the gospel and the law. A second party represent that the Church of England consists of but a small number of the colonists; that as no profession of belief (quakerism excepted) can exclude a man from CLERGY RESERVES. 33 the provincial legislature, so each religion tole- rated by the state should be by the state main- tained. * They exclaim against disuniting re- ligion and education, and insist that the reserves should be divided in shares proportionate to the number of members of each church, — among the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, VVesleyan Methodists, and Baptists. This party is numerous, but not unanimous. In hostility to the exclusive pretensions of the episcopal church they are agreed, but they seem to agree in nothing else ; and some numerous and re- spectable sects are altogether excluded. A third party, and by far the most numerous, require that the maintenance of the clergy should be left, as in the United States, to the voluntary aid of their congregation, and the en- tire produce of the lands reserved for the edu- cation of the people. I have not been long enough in the country to consider the question practically, as applying to the peculiar wants and circumstances of the people ; but theoretically I do not agree with c 5 y , 't I II 84 WINTER STUDIES. any of these parties, and at present am content to listen to all I hear around me. With regard to the petition forwarded to the home govern- ment, it has heen an ample source of ridicule that a house of parliament, of which many members could not read, and many more could not spell, should be thus zealous on the subject of education. In truth, I have seen some spe- cimens of the writing and spelling of honourable members, men of influence and property too, at which it was impossible not to laugh ; but I felt no disposition to join in the ridicule freely bestowed on the writers : it seemed anything but ridiculous, that men who had not themselves received the advantage of a good education, should be anxious to insure it to their children, Mr. H. told me the other day, that in the distant townships not one person in twenty or thirty could read or write, or had the means of attaining such knowledge. On repeating this to Mr. B., a native Canadian, and perfectly acquainted with the country, adding some expression of incredu- lity, he exclaimed laughing, " Not one in twenty or thirty ! — Madam, not one in seventy ! " liM CLERGY UESERV£S. 35 The question, as a mere party question, did not interest me ; but the strange, crude, igno- rant, vague opinions I heard in conversation, and read in the debates and the provincial papers, excited my astonishment. It struck me that if I could get the Enghsh preface to Victor Cousin's report (of which I had a copy) printed in a cheap form, and circulated with the news- papers, adding some of the statistical calcula- tions, and some passages from Duppa's report on the education of the children of the poorer classes, it might do some good — it might assist the people to some general principles on which to form opinions ; — whereas they all appeared to me astray ; nothing that had been promul- gated in Europe on this momentous subject had yet reached them; and the brevity and clearness of this little preface, which exhibits the importance of a system of national educa- tion, and some general truths without admix- ture of any political or sectarian bias, would, I thought— I hoped — obtain for it a favourable reception. But, no; cold water was thrown Ml .A t ■ 11. ' i ■ , , f,i ■ 5 > " t , ji ! f * 1 \ ■'!l I'f I! !i 11, 30 WINTER STUDIES. upon me from every side — my interference in any way was so visibly distasteful, that I gave my project up with many a sigh, and I am afraid I shall always regret this. True, I am yet a stranger — helpless as to means, and feel- ing my way in a social system of which I know little or nothing ; — perhaps I might have done more mischief than good — who knows ? and Truth is sure to prevail at last; but Truth seems to find so much difficulty in crossing the Atlantic, that ono would think she was " like the poor cat i' the adage," afraid of wetting her feet. Another fit of illness and fever of four days* duration happily over ; but it has left me more good-for-nothing than ever — more dejected and weak. Mr. Campbell, the clerk of the assize, has politely offered to drive me over to Niagara in his sleigh. Good-natured Mr. Campbell ! I never saw the man in my life ; but, in the excess WINTKR MISERIES. 37 of my gratitude, am ready to believe him every- thing that is delightful ; my heart was dying within me, gasping and panting for change of some kind— any kind ! I suppose from the same sort of instinct which sends the wounded animal into the forest to seek for the herb which shall heal him. For here is Dr. R., who assures me that change of air is the only thing which can counteract the effect of these successive fits of aguish fever : so it is fixed that on Tuesday next, at eight o'clock in the morning, I shall be ready to step into Mr. Campbell's sleigh. Five days— five times twenty-four hours of frost and snow without, and monotonous solitude within — and my faculties, and my fingers, and my ink, all frozen up ! " So slow the unprofitable moments roll. That lock up all the functions of my soul. That keep me from myself." Slow ? — yes ; but why unprofitable ? that were surely my own fault ! iiii i! • * ■ *r i" • ; r; ' : n . lL. 38 WINTER STUDIES. January 21. There is some diminution of the intense cold yesterday and to-day. The thermometer is above zero. I begin to be ashamed of recording idle days and useless days, and to have a conception of what those unfortunate wretches must suffer, who are habitually without an interest and without an occupation. What a life is this ! " Life which the very stars reprove, As on their silent tasks they move." > ^ 1 '. i 1 To me it is something new, for I have never yet been ennuyte to death — except in fiction. It is like the old-fashioned torture patronised by that amiable person. Queen Elizabeth, when a certain weight was placed on the bosom of the criminal, and increased gradually every day till the life and the heart were crushed together. Well ! patience and resignation are still at hand:— but Patience, "the young and rose-lipped cherubim," seems to have borrowed the features of grim Necessity, and, instead ■"JX^^^-L^ DUTY. 39 TT !i i 1 of singing an angeVs song, clanks her fetters in my ear ; and Resignation comes in a form which reminds me of Ottilie's definition — " Resigna- tion, my dear, is only a despair, which does not beat people." Yet there remains Duty, which is, far more than Love — . . '* The star to every wandering bark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken." It is the upholding law through which the weakest become strong, without which all strength is unstable as water. No charac- ter, however harmoniously framed and glo- riously gifted, can be complete without this abiding principle; it is the cement which binds the whole moral edifice together, without which all power, goodness, intellect, truth, hap- piness, love itself, can have no permanence ; but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin — astonished at our own de- solation. li'i , :'! 1 ,t \ iii' i Hi l*i J V , "n,, !l ( • > ; , 1; > ■ ( * i :'! 8!' HI ' ii ■■."■ t liii 11: i t i» 40 M-NTER STUDIES. January 21 — 22. While ranging my German books this morn- ing, I fell upon the Correggio of Oehlenschl'ager, and Die Schuld of Miillner; and I read both through carefully. The former pleased me more, the latter struck me less, than when I read them both for the first time a year ago. One despairs of nothing since the success of "Ion;" but would it be possible, think you, that the tragedy of " Correggio*" could be ex- hibited in England with anything like the suc- cess it met with hi Germany ? Here — in Eng- land I mean — it might indeed "j^^ audience find, though few," but would it meet with the same sympathy? — would it even be endured with common patience by a mixed audience — such as hailed its appearance in Germany ? Here is a tragedy, of which the pervading in- terest is not low ambition and the pride of kings ; nor love, nor terror, nor murder, nor the rivalship of princes, nor the fall of dynasties, nor any of the usual forms of tragic incident — but ART, high art — its power as developed with- in the u dividual soul — its influence on the TRAGEDY OF COIIREGGIO. 41 minds of others. This idea is embodied in the character of Correggio : yet he is no abstrac- tion, but perfectly individualised. All those traits of his life and peculiar habits and dispo- sition, handed down by tradition, are most care- fully preserved, and the result is a most ad- mirable portrait of the artist and the man. His gentleness, his tenderness, his sensitive modesty, his sweet, loving, retiring disposition, are all touched with exquisite delicacy, llie out-break of noble self-confidence, when he exclaimed, after gazing on RafFaelle's St. Cecilia, " Anch' 10 sono Pittore!" is beautifully introduced. The sight of the same picture sent La Francia home to his bed to die, so at least it is said : but Cor- reggio was not a man to die of another's excel- lence, though too often doubting his own. The anecdote of the man who was saved from the rapacity and vengeance of a robber, by an appeal to one of his pictures, and the story of his paying his apothecary with one of his finest works,* are * The Christ on the Mount of Olives, now, if I re- member rightly, in possession of the Duke of Wel- lington. , ■' ni:-..: ^; I i'. M I 'ill H)m 1 11 *' ! t il Mi ;n 42 WINTER STUDIES. also real incidents of the painter's life, intro- duced with the most picturesque effect. Those who have travelled through the forests of Catholic Germany and Italy, must often have seen a Madonna, or a Magdalen, in a rude frame, shrined against the knotted trunk of an old oak overshadowing the path; the green grass waving round, a votive wreath of wild flowers hung upon the rude shrine, and in front a little space worn bare |^by the knees of tra- vellers who have turned aside from their journey to rest in the cool shade, and put up an Ave Maria, or an Ora pro nobis. I well remem- ber once coming on such a Madonna in a wild woodland path near VoUbriicken, in Upper Austria. Two little, half-naked children, and a gaunt, black-bearded wood-cutter, were kneel- ing before it ; and from afar the songs of some peasants gathering in the harvest were borne on the air. The Magdalen of Correggio, the same which is now in the Dresden gallery, and multiplied in prints and copies through the known world, is represented without any vio- lent stretch of probability as occupying such a li TRAGEDY OF CORREGGIO. 43 situation : nor are we left in doubt as to the identity of the picture ; it is described in three or four exquisite lines. It is beautiful, — is it not ? — where Correggio comments on his work, as he is presenting it to the old hermit : — " Ein sundhaft Madchen, das mit Reu' und Angst Wie ein gescheuchtes Reh zum Dickicht floh, Um der nachstellung ferner zu entgehen. Doch ist es schon von einem Weibe, meyn ich, Einmal gefallen wieder sich zu heben ; Es gibt sehr wen'ge Manner, die das konnen." * And the reply of Silvestro places the lovely form before us, painted in words. . Welch schon Gemahlde ! Der dunkle Schattenwald, die blonden Haare, Die weisse Haut, das himmel blau Gewand * An erring maiden, that in fear and penitence Flies, like timid hind, to the deep woods. Seeking t'escape the snares around her laid— And it is good to see a hapless woman That has once fallen redeem herself; in truth, There be few men methinks could do as much. J /,' "ivf % r Htl !| i I ;• ?'" m m lii 44 WINTER STUDIES. Die Jugendfiille und der Todtenkopf, Das Weiberhafte und das grosse Buch, Ihr habt mit vieler Kunst die Gegeiisatze In schoner Harmonie liier auf-gelost." * The manner in which Correggio betrays his regret on parting with his picture, is also natural and most exquisite. " Die Dichter haben's gut ; sie konnen immer Die Kinder alle in der Nahe haben. Der Mahler ist ein armer Vater, der Sie in die weite Welt aussenden muss; Da miissen sie nachher sich selbst versorgen." t • . . . What a fair picture ! This dark o'er-hanging shade^ the long fair hair, The delicate white skin, the dark blue robe. The full luxuriant life, the grim death's head. The tender womanhood, and the great book — These various contrasts hare you cunningly Brought into sweetest harmony. t Well for the poet ! he can ever have The children of his soul beside him here ; The painter is a needy father ; he Sends his poor children out in the wide world To seek their fortune. TRAGEDY OF COUREGGIO. 45 Grouped around Correggio in every possible degree of harmony and contrast, we have a variety of figures ail sufficiently marked, each in itself complete, and all aiding in carrying out the main effect, the apotheosis of the artist hero. Nor has Oehlenschliiger made his tragedy the vehicle for mere declamation, nor for inculcating any particular system of art or set of principles. In Michael Angelo and in Giulio Romano we have exhibited two artist-minds as different from each other and from Antonio Correggio as can be imagined. The haughty* stern, arro- gant, but magnanimous and magnificent Michael Angelo, can with difficulty be brought to appre- ciate, or even look upon, a style so different from his own, and thunders out his rules of art like Olympian Jove. The gay, confident, generous, courteous Giulio Romano is less ex- clusive, if less severely grand, in his taste. The luxuriant grace of Correggio, the blending of the purely natural with the purely ideal, in his conceptions of beauty, are again distinct f: iJ7 ! ^i (i ' i' M ! : i i '!■ I' lil ■i 1); 'I'll i ■ I Hi Vi ' ■'' til' ■I' i^^ll . ; ( 46 WINTER STUDIES. from both these great masters. Again the influence of art over minds variously constituted is exhibited in the tender wife of Correggio, the favourite model for his Madonnas; the old hermit Silvestro; the high-born, beautiful en- thusiast, Celestina, who places the laurel-wreath on the brow of the sleeping painter : and the pea- sant girl, Lauretta, who gives him drink when fainting with thirst; and the penitent robber; and the careless young noble, with whom art is sub- servient to his vanity and his passions ; and the vulgar villain of the piece, Battista, who alone is absolutely insensible to its influence; — all these form as beautiful a group, and as perfect in keeping, as we can meet in dramatic litera- ture. Then there are such charming touches of feeling, such splendid passages of description and aphorisms on art, which seize on the fancy and cling to the memory ! while the allusions to certain well-known pictures, bringing them before the mind's eye in a few expressive and characteristic words, are delicious to the ama- teur. f 1 .i TRAGEDY OF CORREGGIO. 47 The received account of the cause of Cor- reggio*8 death rests on a tradition,* which later researches render very problematical; but it remains uncontradicted that he lived and died poor — that his health was feeble and delicate — his life retired and blameless ; — and the catas- trophe has been so long current and credited, that the poet has done well to adhere to the common tradition. In the very moment that Correggio sinks into death, a messenger arrives from the Duke of Mantua, with splendid offers of patronage. He comes too late. Art and the world are the heirs of the great man's genius ; * That of Vasari, who states that he died in ex- treme poverty ; that, having received at Parma a pay- ment of sixty crowns, which was churlishly made to him in copper, he walked to the city of Correggio with this load on his back from anxiety to relieve his family, and died in consequence of the effort. Lanzi and other of his biographers distrust this story, and have pointed out its improbability. Whatever the cause of his death, the expressions of Annibal Carracci are conclusive as to the neglect and poverty in which he lived. 'i l\ \ V > \< <^ i ^■'.1 'i I ;;: :'l il'. - ^h^.^ fil t ! > ■1;: il'' i ?' |1 ;■■ 48 WINTER STUDIES. his poor family follow him heart-broken to the grave. The Schuld of Adolf MuUner does not produce such an overpowering effect on the imagination the second time of reading, because we are not hurried forward by the interest of the story ; but in one respect it has affected me more deeply than at first. Hugo says, " Mich dunket, nie ,., SoUten Nord und Sud sich kiissen!" * And all through this fine play the spirit of the North and the spirit of the South are brought into beautiful yet fearful contrast. The passions which form the groundwork of the piece are prepared amid the palaces and orange-groves of the glowing South : the catastrophe evolved amid the deserts and pine-forests of the North ; and in the fair, still-souled, but heroic Scandi- navian maid, Jerta, and the dark, impassioned Elvira, we have the personified sentiment of the North and the South. • Methinks, That North and South should never kiss each other. ACTRESSES. 49 Has it ever occurred to you that Coleridge must have had this tragedy in iiis mind when he wrote his " Remorse ?" What a sHght touch upon an extreme link will send us back sometimes through a long, long chain of memories and associations ! A word, a name, has sent me from Toronto to Vienna ; what a flight ! what a contrast I — it makes even Fancy herself breathless ! Did I ever mention to you Madame Arneth ? When the " Schuld" was produced at Vienna, she played the Scandinavian Jerta, and I have heard the effect of her representation compared, in its characteristic purity and calmness, and mild intellectual beauty, to the " moonlight on a snow-wreath," — a comparison which gave me a vivid impression of its truth. Madame Arneth was herself not unlike the fair and serious Jerta. The question has been often agitated, often controverted, but I am inclined to maintain the opinion elsewhere expressed, that there is nothing in the profession of an actress which is incom. patible with the respect due to us as women — vou I. D M U M \ ^ i-'i ii m 'i r I I i' I ! I I I I ! M WmTER STUDIES. the cultivation of every feminine virtue — the practice of every private duty. I have con- versed with those who think otherwise, and yet continue to frequent the theatre as an amuse- ment, and even as a source of mental delight and improvement ; and this I conceive to be a dereliction of principle — wrong in itself, and the 'iause of wrong. A love for dramatic represen- tation, for imitative action, is in the elements of our human nature ; we see it in children, in savages, in all ages, in all nations ; — we cannot help it — it is even so. That the position of an actress should sometimes be a false one, — a dan- gerous one even for a female, is not the fault of the profession, but the eflFect of the public opi- nion of the profession. When fashion, or con- ventional law, or public opinion, denounce as inexpedient what they cannot prove to be wrong — stigmatise what they allow — encourage and take delight in what they affect to contemn — what wonder that from such barbarous, such senseless inconsistency, should spring a whole heap of abuses and mistakes ? As to the idea ACTRESSES. 51 that acting, as a profession, is incompatible with female virtue and moiesty, it is not merely an insult to the estimable women who have adorned and still adorn the stage, but to all womankind ; it makes me blush with indigna- tion. Unreflecting people — the world is full of such — point to the numerous instances which migiit be cited to the contrary. I have been perplexed by them sometimes in argument, but never on consideration and examination; and with regard to some other evils, not less, as it appears to me, in a moral point of view, I do not see their necessary connexion with the stage as a profession. Vanity, jealousy, selfishness, the spirit of intrigue, the morbid effects of over-excitement, are not confined to actresses ; if women placed in this position do require caution and dignity to ward off temptation, and self-control to resist it, and some knowledge of their own structure and the liabilities incurred by their profession, in order to manage better their own health, moral and physical, then they only require what all women d2 f:|n i, :U i 1. t\ 1 1,1 .1 J i t ♦ ■ / j 1 1 J.(! I' il ii' M > ! lil-j] ill 52 SOPHIE MULLER. should possess — what every woman needs, no matter what her position. But to return to Madame Arneth. . At Vienna, some years ago, there liyed three celebrated actresses, all beautiful, and j^ung, and gifted. Sophie Miiller was first mentioned to me by Schlegel ; he spoke of her with rapturous ad- miration as the most successful representative of some of Shakspeare's characters that had yet been seen in Germany, and she seems to have left an ineflFaceable impression on those who saw her play Chrimhilde in the " Niebelung." She was sur- rounded by admirers, adorers, yet I never heard m that one among them could boast of being dis- tinguished even by a preference; austere to herself, devoted to her art, which she studied assiduously, her ambition centered in it ; in the mean time she was performing all the duties of a daughter to an aged father, and of a mother to a family of younger brothers and sisters ; and her house was a model oi good order and pro- priety. She died in 1830. Not long before died Anna Kriiger, equally ANTOINETTE ADAMBERGER 53 blameless in her conduct and reputation as a woman, but in all other respects negligent of herself and of her own interests. She was remarkably free from all selfishness or jealousy, charitable and good, and universally beloved. Her representation of spirited or heroic charac- ters, in comedy and in tragedy, has been de- scribed to me as wonderfully fine. Schiller's Joan of Arc was her chef d'wuvre. The third was Antoinette Adamberger, now Madame Arneth, whom I am happy and proud to number among my friends. Her former name cannot be unknown to you, for it has a dear yet melancholy celebrity throughout all Germany, and is inseparably associated with the literature of her country, as the betrothed bride of Theodore Korner, the poet-hero of the war of deliverance. It was not till we had been for some time intimate that 1 ever heard her aKude to Korner. One evening as we were sitting alone, she gave me, with much feeling and gra- phic power, and even more simplicity, some particulars of her first interview with him, and ■ ! r ! 1 Hi : . ■ r '|i "': i . \l ^' ; ,| |! i.r^-h 'A . ! ■J ■ '■ ■ If U JJ IF ■1 '■ 1 ; 1 1; 1 ■ • . i ', '*■' A 1 \:l ■.1 r ;i ii'JH 54 WINTER STUDIES. the circumstances which led to their engage- ment. I should tell you that she was at the time a favourite actress of the Court Theatre, and excelled particularly in all characters that required more of delicacy, and grace, and dig- nity, than of power and passion; those of Thekla in the " Wallenstein," and Jerta in the ** Schuld," heing considered as her masterpieces. Of her judgment as an artiste I could form some idea, from the analysis into which I once tempted her of the Beatrice in Schiller's " Braut von Messina," a character in which she is said to have excelled, and which, in its tender deli- cacy and almost evanescent grace, might be compared to Perdita. To analyse all the pas- sive beauty and power of Schiller's conception, must have required a just and exquisite taste, and to render them with such felicity and effect, a person corresponding in girlish delicacy. Yet, perhaps, in her youthful years, when she played Beatrice divinely, Madame Arneth could not have analysed the character as ingeniously as she did when a ripened judgment and more culti- ANTOINETTE ADAMBERGER. 55 vated taste enabled her to reflect on her own' con- ception. This, however, is digressing ; for the moral qualities, not the intellectual powers, of the actress, are what I am contending for. Theodore Korner came to Vienna in 1813, bringing with him his " Griine Domino," a piece composed expressly for Anna Kriiger and Antoinette Adamberger. These two young women, differing altogether in character, were united by the most tender friendship, and a sin- cere admiration for each other's particular talent. I have been told that it was delightful to see them play together in the same piece, the perfect understanding which existed be- tween them producing an eflfect of harmony and reality which was felt, rather than perceived, by the audience. At the period of Korner*s arrival, Antoinette was ill in consequence of the ex- treme severity of the winter of that year, and the rehearsal of the " Griine Domino" was put off from day to day, from week to week, till Korner became absolutely impatient. At this time he had not been introduced to Antoinette, I I* ''I 1; ii i> n 4 • * f ?:*: HI ! ,i:t -i^ :? ■ 7 * i if ,1 1 m -ii' ill: m 11 ii I mv^^ : I i! I i-Vi\ 1:^ / 56 WINTER STUDIES. and it was suspected that the beauty of Anna Krliger had captivated him. At length, the convalescence of the principal actress was an- nounced, the day for the long-deferred rehearsal arrived, and the performers had assembled in the green-room. Now, it happened that in the time of the late empress,* the representation of Schiller's " Marie Stuart " had been forbidden, because her imperial majesty had been greatly scandalised by the indecorous quarrel scene be- tween Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and particularly by the catastrophe of the latter, regarding the whole play as extremely dan- gerous and derogatory to all crovned heads, more especially female ones. On her death it was hoped that this prohibition would be re- pealed, and the performers presented a petition to that effect. The emperor, however, steadily refused, on the plea that he uad promised the empress never to permit the representation of the tragedy.f The refusal had just been re- • Maria-Theresa-Caroline of Naples., who died in J 807. t I do not know whether the emperor was ever in- ANTOINETTE ADAMBEKOER. 57 . " r i{ ceived, and the whole corps dramatique were in a state of commotion, and divided on the merits of the case. Korner, in particular, was in a perfect fever of indignation, and exclaimed, in no measured terms, against the edict which deprived the public of one of Schiller's master- pieces, in tenderness to the caprices of an old woman now in her gr?ive, et cetera. The greater number of those present sympathised with him. The dispute was at its height when Antoinette entered the room, still weak from recent illness, and wrapped up in cloaks and furs. Her com- rades crowded around her with congratulations and expressions of affection, and insisted that the matter in dispute should be referred to " Toni ;" Korner, meanwhile, standing by in proud silence ; he had not yet been introduced. When, the affair was stated, and the opinions of duced to break this promise. It was after his death that I saw the Marie Stuart performed at Vienna, where Madame Schroeder and Madlle. Fournier appeared af Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart. d5 f i 1 -I ,»■-.■ I M il m i 1 i\ Mi- 58 WINTER STUDIES. : ,. I !Mi jf!:ij:: .; li '1 1,:, : jM the majority vehemently pressed on her, she re- plied in her gentle manner, *^ I do not pretend to judge about the injury done to the public, or the expediency or inexpediency of the matter ; it is a simple question between right and wrong — between truth and falsehood. For myself, I can only say, that if I had made a promise to a person I loved, or to any one, I would keep it as long as I had life myself, and the death of that person would render such a promise not less, but more binding, more sacred, if pos- sible." This simple appeal to principle and truth silenced all. Korner said no more, but his attention was fixed, and from that moment, as he told her afterwards, he loved her ; his feel- ings were interested before he had even looked into her eyes ; and it is no wonder that those eyes, when revealed, completed her conquest. Within a few weeks they A\*^re betrothed lovers, and within a few months afterwards the patriotic war (die Freiheits-Kriege) broke out, and Korner joined Lutzow*s volunteers. His ! 1" ANTOINETTE ADAMBERGER. 59 fate is well known. Young and handsome, a poet and a hero, loving, and in the full as- surance of being loved, with all life's fairest visions and purest affections fresh about his head and heart, he perished — the miniaturt^ of " Toni" being found within his bosom next, to the little pocket-book in which he had written the Song of the Sword — the first shattered by the bullet which had found his heart, the latter stained with his blood ; I have seen it, — held it in my hand ! Now, will you believe, that within three or four months afterwards, when Antoinette was under the obligation to resume her professional duties, the first character she was ordered to play was that of Thekla? In vain she entreated to be spared this outrage to every feeling of a heart yet bleeding from her loss; the greater her reluctance, the greater the effect which would be produced on the curiosity and sympathy of the public ; — this, I suppose, was the cold calculation of the direc- tory ! She was not excused ; and after going through the scene in which the Swedish captain ■\ ,'., . I m :!• '1. if'' I i II 'i I'l \M W^ m ni "■!i I' ' lif 60 WINTER STUDIES. relates to Thekla the death of her lover,* the poor Antoinette was carried from the stage by her aunt almost lifeless, and revived only to give way to such agonies of grief and indigna- tion as threatened her reason. Madame Arneth is remarkably calm and simple in her manner, and more than twenty years had elapsed since she had been thus in- sulted and tortured ; but when she alluded to this part of her history, she became gradually con- vulsed with emotion, trembled in every limb, and pressed her hands upon her eyes, from which the tears would gush in spite of an effort to restrain them. And to this, you will say, an actress could be exposed? Yes; and I remember anothir instance, when under circumstances as cruel and as revolting, a young and admired actress was hurried before the public in an agony of reluctance; but still I do say, that such exhibitions are not necessarily or solely confined to the profession of the stage ; woman, as a legal property, is subjected to them in her * It will be remembered that the death of Theodore Kornei was similar to that of Max Piccodomiiii. fi m ANTOINETTE ADAMBERGEU. 61 conventional position ; a woman may be brought into a church against her will, libelled and pilloried in an audacious newspaper; an Eng- lish matron may be dragged from private life into a court of justice, exposed, guiltless and helpless, to the public obloquy or the public sympathy, in shame and in despair. If such a scene can by possibility take place, one stage is not worse than another. Antoinette had suffered what a woman of a quiet but proud temper never forgets or for- gives. She had made up her mind to quit the stage, and there was only one way of doing so with honour. Four years after the death of Korner she married Mr. Arneth, one of the directors of the Imperial Museum, a learned and amiable man, considerably older than her- self,* and with whom she has lived happily. • Madame Arneth is now Vorleserin (Reader) to the Empress Dowager, and entrusted with the direc- tion of a school, founded by the Empress lor the chil- dren of soldiers. In Austria only two soldiers in each company are allowed to marry, and the female children of such marriages are, in a manner, predestined to H 1 1 ^\ i-t' !-^s \\\ .1 I ] j M • l! , it- ; <'■ If! ■i 62 WINTER STUDIES. !! , ii ii ; ^ i' .{ ' ii it Hi: '; lit ; I IT Before I left Vienna she presented me with a book which Ktirner had given her, containing his autograph and the dramas he had written for her — " Die Toni," " der Grline Domino," and others. I exclaimed |;houghtles8ly, " O how can you part with it ?" and she repHed, with a sweet seriousness, " When I married a worthy man who loved me and trusted me, I thought there should be no wavering of the heart be- tween past recollections and present duties : I put this and all other objects connected with that first period of my life entirely away, and I have never looked at it since. Take it ! and believe me, even now, it is better in your hands than in mine." And mine it shall never leave. Madame Arneth once described to me the admirable acting of Schroeder in Medea, when playing with her own children : she treated want and infamy. In the school under Madame Ar- neth's direction, I found (in 1835) forty-live children, well managed and healthy. The benevolence which suggested such an institution is, without doubt, praise- worthy j but what shall we say of the system which makes such an institution necessary ? ANTOINETTE ADAMBEROER. 63 :.i,i them, however, with savage roughness, and when remonstrated with, she replied, " the chil- dren were her own, and she had a right to do what she liked with them." " That was certainly her affair," added Madame Arneth, "but I would not for the whole world have exhibited myself before my own children in such a character." Is not this a woman worthy of all love, all respect, all reverence ? and is not this the senti- ment of duty which is, or should be, " the star to every wandering bark ?" And thus I have read and scribbled away two long days. The eve of my intended excursion is come at last ; I am looking forward to to- iiorrow with almost childish pleasure and impatience. The weather is most ominous ; but I shall see Niagara in all its wintry magnificence — a sight granted to few. O ! in this moment I do not envy you the blue Mediterranean, nor the summer skies and orange-groves of your southern island ! fife fi if 1 ,!' ^1 r-: III n. ' I '■ I 64 If ?.; : ' I I . tl ! .hi I'' *■ NIAGARA IN WINTER. Merrily dash we o'er valley and hill. All but the sleigh-bell is sleeping and still ; O bless the dear sleigh-bell ! there's nought can compare To its loud merry tones as they break on the ear. Our horses are staunch,and they dash o'er the snow; Our bells ring out gaily the faster we go ; The night breezes sing with an answering swell To the melody rude of the merry sleigh-bell. . . » ^ . ^ Canadian Song. January 23. At half-past eight Mr. Campbell was at the door in a very pretty eoramodious sleigh, in form like a barouche, with the head up. I was ab- solutely buried in furs ; a blanket, netted for SLEIGH JOURNEY. ^ me by the kindest hands, of the finest lamb's- wool, rich in colour, and as light and elastic as it was deliciously warm, was folded round my limbs; buffalo and bear skins were heaped over all, and every breath of the external air ex- cluded by every possible device. Mr. Camp- bell drove his own grey horses; and thus fortified and accoutred, off we flew, literally " urged by storms along the slippery way," for the weather was terrific. I think that but for this journey I never could have imagined the sublime desolation of a northern winter, and it has impressed me strongly. In the first place, the whole atmo- sphere appeared as if converted into snow, which fell in thick, tiny, starry flakes, till the bufliilo robes and furs about us appeared like swansdown, and the harness on the horses of the same delicate material. The whole earth was a white waste : the road, on which the sleigh-track was only just perceptible, ran for miles in a straight line ; on each side rose the dark, melancholy pine« forest, slumbering drearily \^ i ll! I ''! i' Id I-' g- ■:: ■i! ': 1- I 'I I i , I ':►*' (■1 u^ i I I !1 V 66 WINTER STUDIES. in the hazy air. Between us and the edge of the forest were frequent spaces of cleared or half-cleared land, spotted over with the black charred stumps and blasted trunks of once magnificent trees, projecting from the snow- drift. These, which are perpetually recurring objects in a Canadian landscape, have a most melancholy appearance. Sometimes wide open- ings occurred to the left, bringing us in sight of Lake Ontario, and even in some places down upon the edge of it : in this part of the lake the enormous body of the water and its incessant movement prevents it from freezing, and the dark waves rolled in, heavily plunging on the icy shore with a sullen booming sound. A few roods from the land, the cold grey waters, and the cold, grey, snow-encumbered atmosphere, were mingled with each other, and each seemed either. The only living thing I saw in a space of about twenty miles, was a magnificent bald-headed eagle, which, after sailing a few turns in advance of us, alighted on the topmost bough of a blasted pine, and slowly folding his OAKVILLE. 67 great wide wings, looked down upon us as we glided beneath him. The first village we passed through was Springfield, on the river Credit, a river of some importance in summer, but now, converted in^o ice, heaped up with snow, and undis- tinguishable. Twenty miles further, we stop- ped at Oakville to refresh ourselves and the horses. Oakville stands close upon the lake, at the mouth of a little river called Sixteen-mile Creek ; it owes its existence to a gentleman of the name of Chisholm, and, from its situation and other local circumstances, bids fair to be- come a place of importance. In the summer it is a frequeiited harbour, and carries on a con- siderable trade in lumber, for so they charac- teristically call timber in this country. From its dock-yards I am told that a fine steam-boat and a dozen schooners have been already launched. In summer, the country round is rich and beautiful, with a number of farms all in a high i. « V' J 1 ■ i ' ■ • f 1 i i f: •' '\' i 1(1 li .'1 I I J iii !|l ' '■V >i 1 1 ;lti I 1|. :.i;i 'iJi I ' 1"; I li'' « 68 WINTER STUDIES. State of cultivation ; but Canada in winter and in summer must be like two different regions. At present the mouth of the creek ib frozen up ; all trade, all ship-building suspended. Oakville presents the appearance of a straggling hamlet, containing a f53w frame and log-houses ; one brick house, (the grocery store, or general shop, which in a new Canadian village is always the best house in the place ;) a little Methodist church, painted green and white, but as yet no resident preacher ; and an inu dignified by the name of the " Oakville House Hotel." Where there is a store, a tavern, and a church, habitations soon rise around them. Oakville contains at pre- sent more than thrre hundred inhabitants, who are now subscribing among themselves for a schoolmaster and a resident clergyman. I stood conversing in the porch, and looking about me, till I found it necessary to seek shelter in the house, before my nose was abso- lutely taken off by the ice-blast. The little parlour was solitary, and heated like an oven. Against the wall were stuck a few vile prints. f. 1 i'\ I '■-ih m OAKVILLE. 69 li: Im] taken out of old American magazines ; there was the Duchess de Berri in her wedding-dress, and as a pendant, the Modes de Paris — " Robe de tulle garnie de fleurs — coiflFure nouvelle, in^ ventee par Mons. Plaisir." The incongruity was but too laughable ! I looked round me for some amusement or occupation, and at last spied a book open, and turned down upon its face. I pounced upon it as a prize ; and what do you think it was ? " Devinez, madame ! je vous ie donne en trois, je vous le donne en quatre !" it was — Don Juan ! And so, while looking from the window on a scene which realised all you can imagine of the desolation of savage life, mixed up with just so much of the common- place vulgarity of civilised life as sufl&ced to spoil it, I amused myself reading of the Lady Adeline Amundeville and her precious coterie, and there anent. Society is smoothed to that excess. That manners hardly differ more than dress. * ' . 11 f I' 11 i i 13 : If, ■ .■Ji iiii ml!; ii!:! ".; : ■I" i. 111! fi '! ,1 If iIIm i' ^iii. f' 70 WINTER STUDIES. ii'i III Our ridicules are kept in the background. Ridiculous enough, but also dull ; Professions, too, are no more to be found Professional, and there is nought to cull Of Folly's fruit ; for tho' your fools abound, They're barren, and not worth the pains to pull. Society is now one polished horde, Form'd of two mighty tribes—the bores and bored. A delineation, by the way, which might almost reconcile one to a more savage locality than that around me. While 1 was reading, the mail-coach between Hamilton and Toronto drove up to the door; and because you shall understand what sort of a thing a Canadian mail is, and thereupon sym- pathise in my irrepressible wonder and amuse- ment, I must sketch it for you. It was a heavy wooden edifice, about the size and form of an old-fashioned lord mayor's coach, placed on runners, and raised about a foot from the ground ; the whole was painted of a bright red, and long icicles hung from the roof. This mon- strous machine disgorged from its portal eight ii ' f H L'V: hi ii- OAKVILLE. 71 1 \ i i men-creatures, all enveloped in bear-skins and shaggy dreadnoughts, and pea-jackets, and fur- caps down upon their noses, looking like a pro- cession of bears on their hind-legs, tumbling out of a showman's caravan. They proved, however, when undisguised, to be gentlemen, most of them going up to Toronto to attend their duties in the House of Assembly. One of these, a per- sonage of remarkable height and size, and a peculiar cast of features, was introduced to me as Mr. Kerr, the possessor of large estates in the neighbourhood, partly acquired, and partly in- herited from his father-in-law Brandt, the famous chief of the Six Nations. Kerr himself has Indian blood in his veins. His so*^ . young Kerr, a fine boy about ten years old, is the pre- sent acknowledged chief of the Six Nations, in his mother's right, the hereditary chieftainship being always transmitted through the female, though passing ever her. Mrs. Kerr, the eldest daughter of Brandt, is a squaw of un- mixed Indian blood, and has been describee, to me as a very superior creature. She has the li '( ■ 1 ■\ !^ i i 1 i i ' .! ; :l piifea i m ^ ii : -f u I'M' •i :• 'i: 72 WINTER STUDIES. good sense to wear habitually her Indian cos- tume, slightly modified, in which she looks and moves a princess, graceful and unrestrained, while in a fashionable European dress the effect is exactly the reverse. Much mischief has been done in this neigh- bourhood by beasts of prey, and the deer, driven by hunger and the wolves from their forest haunts, have been killed, near the settlements, in unusual numbers. One of the Indians whom I saw at Toronto, on returning by this road, shot with his new rifle eight deer in one day, and sold them at Hamilton for three dol- lars each — no bad day's hunting. The venison in Canada is good and abundant, but very lean, very unlike English venison ; the price is gene- rally four or six cents (twopence or threepence) a pound. After taking some refreshment, we set forth again. The next village we passed was called, oddly enough, Wellington Square ; it has been recently laid out, and contains about twenty wooden houses ; — then came Port Nelson, Mr. ii BURLINGTON BAY. 7S Kerr's place. Instead of going round the head of the lake by Hamilton, we crossed that very remarkable tongue or slip of land which divides Burlington Bay from Lake Ontario ; these were, in fact, two separate lakes till a channel was cut through the narrow isthmus. Burlington Bay, containing about forty square miles, is now one sheet of ice, and on the slip of land, which is near seven miles in length, and about two hundred yards in width, we found the snow lying so deep and in such irregular drifts, that we proceeded with difficulty. At length we reached Stony Creek, a village celebrated in these parts as the scene of the bloodiest battle fought between the English and Americans during the last war. We had intended to sleep here, but the inn was so uncomfortable and un- promising, that after a short rest we determined on proceeding ten miles further to Beamsville. It was now dark, and, the snow falling thick, it soon became impossible to distinguish the sleigh-track. Mr. Campbell loosened the reins and left the horses to their own instinct, as- VOL. I. E f. ^' f' *; I 1 I ' m ' ii h:.i !\U 1 i ■ !f ■ \ h 1 ; i > 1 ! J 1 ' i : J 1: 1|^;'" ,1 i ; 'i ,.;i ' i 1;]' " 1 ■ „|:: i ' ii i i' 1 1 ■t 74 WINTER STUDIES. suring me it was the safest way of proceeding. After this I remember no more distinctly, ex- cept that I ceased to hear the ever-jingling sleigh-bells. I awoke, as if from the influence of nightmare, to find the sleigh overturned, myself lying in the bottom of it half-smothered, and my companions nowhere to be seen; — they were floundering in the snow behind. " Luckily, when we had stretched ourselves and shaken off the snow, we were found unhurt in life and limb. We had fallen down a bank into the bed of a rivulet, or a mill-race, I be- lieve, which, being filled up with snov ^ was quite as soft, only a little colder, than a down- bed. Frightened I was, bewildered rather, but « eflFective" in a moment. It was impossible for the gentlemen to leave the horses, which were plunging furiously up to the shoulders in the snow, and had already broken the sleigh; so 1 set oiF to seek assistance, having received proper directions. Fortunately we were not far from Beamsville. My beacon-light wis to be the chimney of a forge, from which the bright sparks BEAMSVILLE. 75 •'i 1 1 V. ! W r 1 were streaming up into the dark wintry air, visible from a great distance. After scrambling through many a snow-drift, up hill and down hill, I at last reached the forge, where a man was hammering amain at a ploughshare ; such was the din, that I called for some time un- heard ; at last, as I advanced into the red light of the fire, the man's eyes fell upon me, and I shall never forget his look as he stood poising his hammer, with the most comical expression of bewildered amazement. I could not get an answer from him ; he opened his mouth and re- peated aw ! staring at me, but without speak- ing or moving. I turned away in despair, yet half laughing, and after some more scrambling up and down, I found myself in the village, and was directed to the inn. Assistance was imme- diately sent off to my friends, and in a lew minutes the supper-table was spread, a pile of logs higher than myself blazing away in the chimney ; venison-steaks, and fried fish, coffee, hot cakes, cheese, and whisky punch, (the travel- ler's fare in Canada,) were soon smoking on the E 2 ' ;%'] I!{ ■1 i' I'M 4 : ii!i Ml 7G WINTER STUDIES. table ; our landlady presided, and the evening passed merrily away. The old landlady of this inn amused me ex- ceedingly ; she had passed all her life among her equals in station and education, and had no idea of any distinction between guests and cus- tomers ; and while caressing and attending on me, like an old mother or an old nurse, gave me her history, and that of all her kith and kin. Forty years before, her husband had emigrated, and built a hovel, and made a little clearing on the edge of the lake. At that time there was no other habitation within .^any miles of them, and they passed several years in almost absolute solitude. They have now three farms, some hundred acres of land, and have brought up nine sons and daughters, most of whom are married, and settled on lands of their own. She gave me a horrid picture of the prevalence of drunkenness, the vice and the curse of this country. I can give you no idea of the intense cold of this night ; I was obliged to wrap my fur cloak ST. CATlIERIXr S. 77 1 1 i 1 round mc before I could go to sleep. I rose ill and could eat no breakfast, in spite of all the coaxing of the good landlady ; she got out her best tea, kept for her own drinking, (which tasted for all the world like musty hay,) and buttered toast, i.e. fried bread steeped in melted butter, and fruit preserved in molasses — to all which I shall get used in time — I must try, at least, or <' thank Heaven, faaiini/." We ^pro- ceeded eighteen miles farther, to St. Cathe- rine's, the situation of which appeared to nie very pretty even in winter, and must be beauti- ful in summer. I am told it is a place of import- ance, owing to the vicinity of the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Ontario with Lake Erie : it contains more than seven hundred inhabitants. The school here is reckoned the best in the dis- trict. We passed this morning several streams, which in summer flow into the lake, now all frozen up and undistinguishable, except by the wooden bridges which cross them, and the mills, now still and useless, erected along their banks. These streams have the names of Thirty ^lile 'Mil I II :», 1 ^, IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I Ul 125 |J0 ^"^ ■^ Itt |Z2 im 1-25 III 1.4. 1 1.6 ^ 6" ► A /A i ^ y fliotDgraphic Sciences Corporation 23 WfST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) S72-4503 o .«* v <^ A 5, •#>'-\ I M'^ -; ! ill I li'll'' .i ,• ri ill 78 WINTER STUDIES. Creek, Forty Mile Creek, Twenty Mile Creek, and 80 on ; but wherefore I could not discover. From St. Catherine's we proceeded twelve miles farther, to Niagara. There I found some old Enghsh or rather Irish friends ready to wel- come me with joyous affection ; and surely there is not a more blessed sight than the face of an old friend in a new land I January 26. The town of Niagara presents the same torpid appearance which seems to prevail every- where at this season ; it is situated at the mouth of the river Niagara, and is a place of much business and resort when the navigation is open. The lake does not freeze uere, owing to the depth of its majestic waters; neither does the river, from the velocity of its current ; yet both are blocked up by the huge fragments of ice which are brought down from Lake Erie, and which, uniting and accumulating at the mouth of the river, form a field cf ice extending NIAGARA. 79 '4i far into the lake. How beautiful it looked to-day, broken into vast longitudinal flakes of alternate white and azure, and sparkling in the sunshine ! There are dock -yards here lately erected, dry docks, iron works of some extent, and a steam- engine for hauling up vessels for repair; the chief proprietor is a good-natured and public- spirited gentleman. Captain Melville. He tells me that upwards of twenty thousand pounds have been expended on these works, and they employ constantly about fifty workmen ; yet, in spite of this, and in spite of its local advantages, as a frontier town and the oldest settlement in Upper Canada, Niagara does not make progress. The population and the number of houses have remained nearly stationary for the last five years- I find the people complaining much of the want of a good school. The land all round Niagara is particularly fine and fertile, and it has been longer cleared and cultivated than in other parts of the province. The country, they say, is most beautiful in sum- t I I n: III 'i*i' 1 "' j j i i i 1 % ■ 1 ' 1 i m 80 WINTER STUDIES. iner, taxes are trifling, scarcely felt, and there are no poor-rates ; yet ignorance, recklessness, despondency, and inebriety, seem to prevail. A , who has been settled here five years, and B , himself a Canadian, rate the mora- lity of the Canadian population frightfully low ; lying and drunkenness they spoke of as nearly universal; men who come here with sober habits quickly fall into the vice of the country ; and those who have the least propensity to drinking find the means of gratification com- paratively cheap, and little check from public opinion. Men learn to drink, who never drank before ; And those who always drank, now drink the more. Though I parody, I do not jest ; for in truth, if all, or even half, of what I heard to-day be true, this is a horrible state of things. I asked for a bookseller's shop ; there is not one in the town, but plenty of taverns. There is a duty of thirty per cent on books imported from the United States, and the expense on books imported from NIAGARA. vSl England adds at least one-third to their price ; but there is no duty on whislcy. " If govern- rnent," said B— , " were to lay a duty on whisky, we should only have the province overrun with illicit stills, and another source of crime and depravity added to the main one/' Sir Francis Head recommended to me, play- fully, to get up a grievance, that I might have an excuse for paying him a visit. I think I will represent to his Excellency the dearness oi books and the cheapness of whisky. I could not invent a worse grievance either in earnest or in jest. The opposite shore, about a quarter of a mile off, is the State of New York. The Americans have a fort on their side, and we also have a fort on ours. What the amount of their garri- son may be I know not, but our force consists of three privates and a corporal, with adequate arms and ammunition, i. e. rusty firelocks and da- maged guns. The fortress itself I mistook for a dilapidated brewery. This is charming — it looks like peace and security, at all events. E 5 il '4 ■ IIl; »ii li I' M !l I it i.l rt II f :i 8-2 WINTER STUDIES. , January 29. Well ! I have seen these Cataracts of Niagara, which have thundered in my mind's ear ever since I can remember — which have been my ** childhood's thought, my youth's desire," since first my imagination was awakened to wonder and to wish. I have beheld them, and shall I whisper it to you ? — but, O tell it not among the Philistines I — 1 wish I had not ! 1 wish they were still a thing unbeheld — a thing to be imagined, hoped, and anticipated — some- thing to live for:— the reality has displaced from my mind an illusion far more magnificent than itself — I have no words for my utter disappoint- ment : yet I have not the presumption to sup- pose that all I have heard and read of Niagara is false or exaggerated — that every expression of astonishment, enthusiasm, rapture, is affectation or hyperbole. No ! it must be my own fault. Terni, and some of the Swiss cataracts leap- ing froiu their mountains, have affected me a thousand times more than all the immensity of Niagara. O I could beat myself ! and now i NIAGARA IN WINTER. 83 ii:i Mh there is no help ! — the first n^oment, the first impression is over — is lost ; though I should live a thousand years, long as Niagara itself shall roll, I can never see it again for the first time. Something is gon(} that cannot be re- stored. What has come over my soul and senses? — I am no longer Anna — I am meta- morphosed— I am translated — I am an ass's head, a clod, a wooden spoon, a fat weed growing on Lethe's bank, a stock, a stone, a petrifaction, — for have I not seen Niagara, the wonder of wonders ; and felt — no words can tell what disappointment ! But, to take things in order : we set off for the falls yesterday morning, with the intention of spending the day there, sleeping, and return- ing the next day to Niagara. The distance is fourteen miles, by a road winding along the banks of the Niagara river, and over the Queenston heights; — and beautiful must this land be in summer, since even now it is beau- tiful. The flower garden, the trim shrubbery, the lawn, the meadow with its hedgerows, when frozen up and wrapt in snow, always give me f:",*if|?i I !}' II rJ r ■iW' iii> 'I' J' i I > A' if \mv I ■r 1 ! ! 1 . 1 '■ ' !'■ ' I I'l 84 WINTER STUDIES. the idea of something not only desolate but dead : Nature is the ghost of herself, and trails a spectral pall ; I always feel a kind of pity — a touch of melancholy — when at this season I have wandered among withered shrubs and buried flower-beds ; but here, in the wilderness, where Nature is wholly independent of art, she does not die, nor yet mourn ; she lies down to rest on the bosom of Winter, and the aged one folds her in his robe of ermine and jewels, and rocks her with his hurricanes, and hushes her to sleep. How still it was ! how calm, how vast the glittering white waste and the dark purple forests ! The sun shone out, and the sky was without a cloud ; yet we saw few people, and for many miles the hissing of our sleigh, as we flew along upon our dazzling path, and the tinkling of the sleigh-bells, were the only sounds we heard. When we were within four or five miles of the falls, I stopped the sleigh from time to time to listen for the roar of the cataracts, but the state of the atmosphere was not favourable for the transmission of sound, and the silence was unbroken. NIAGARA IN WINTER. 8ft Such was the deep, monotonous tranquillity which prevailed on every side— so exquisitely pure and vestal-like the robe in which all Na- ture lay slumbering around us, I could scarce believe that this whole frontier district is not only remarkable for the prevalence of vice — but of dark and desperate crime. Mr. A., who is a magistrate, pointed out to me a lonely house by the way-side, where, on a dark stormy night in the preceding winter, he had sur- prised and arrested a gang of forgers and coiners ; it was a fearful description. For some time my impatience had been thus beguiled — impatience and suspense much like those of a child at a theatre before the curtain rises. My imagination had been so impressed by the vast height of the Falls, that I was constantly looking in an upward direction, when, as we came to the brow of a hill, my companion suddenly checked the horses, and exclaimed, « The Falls !" I was not, for an instant, aware of their pre- sence ; we were yet at a distance, looking down upon them ; and I saw at one glance a flat ex- i i fi % , 1 Ift il' 86 WINTER STUDIES. tensive plain; the sun having withdrawn its beams for the moment, there was neither light, nor shade, nor colour. In the midst were seen the two great cataracts, but merely as a feature in the wide landscape. The sound was by no means overpowering, and the clouds of spray, which Fanny Butler called so beautifully the " everlasting incense of the waters," now con- densed ere they rose by the excessive cold, fell round the base of the cataracts in fleecy folds, just concealing that furious embrace of the waters above and the waters below. All the associations which in imagination I had gathered round the scene, its appalling terrors, its soul- subduing beauty, power and height, and velo- city and immensity, were all diminished in effect, or wholly lost. ii( # IK » I was quite silent — my very soul sank within me. On seeing my disappointment (written, I suppose, most legibly in my countenance) my companion began to comfort me, by telling me of all those who had been disappointed on II NIAGARA IN WINTER. 87 the first view of Niagara, and had confessed it. I did confess ; but I was not to be comforted. We held on our way to the Clifton hotel, at the foot of the hill ; most desolate it looked with its summer verandahs and open balconies cumbered up with snow, and hung round with icicles — its forlorn, empty rooms, broken windows, and dusty dinner tables. The poor people who kept the house in winter had gathered themselves for vtrarmth and comfort into a little kitchen, and when we made our appearance, stared at us with a blank amazement, which showed what a rare thing was the sight of a visitor at this season. While the horses were cared for, I went up into the highest balcony to command a better view of the cataracts ; a little Yankee boy, with a shrewd, sharp face, and twinkling black eyes, acting as my gentleman usher. As I stood gazing on the scene which seemed to enlarge upon my vision, the little fellow stuck his hands into his pockets, and looking up in my face, said, " You be from the old country, I reckon ?" i| i> ! i * ) '• ■^' i ' \ > i til 88 WINTER STUDIES. " Yes." " Out over there, beyond the sea?" « Yes." " And did you come all that way across the sea for these here falls?" "Yes." " My I !"' Then after a long pause, and eye- ing me with a most comical expression of im- pudence and fun, he added, " Now, do you know what them 'ere birds are, out yonder ? " pointing to a number of gulls which were hover- ing and sporting amid the spray, rising and sinking and wheeling around, appearing to de- light in playing on the verge of this " hell of waters " and almost dipping their wings into the foam. My eyes were, in truth, fixed on these fair, fearless creatures, and they had suggested already twenty fanciful similitudes, when I was roused by his question. " Those birds?" said I. " Why, what are they ?" " Why, them's eagles ! " " Eagles ?" it was impossible to help laugh- ing. NIAGARA IN WINTm. 89 " Vos," said the urchin sturdily ; " and I guess you have none of them in the old coun- try?" " Not many eagles, my boy ; but plenty of /yw//*/" and I gave him a pretty considerable pinch by the ear. " Ay ! "'' said he, laughing ; " well now you be dreadful smart — smarter than many folks that come here ! '* We now prepared to walk to the Crescent fall, and 1 bound some crampons to my feet, like those they use among the Alps, without which I could not for a moment have kept my footing on the frozen surface of the snow. As we approached the Table Rock, the whole scene assumed a wild and wonderful magnificence ; down came the dark-green waters, hurrying with them over the edge of the precipice enor- mous blocks of ice brought down from Lake Erie. On each side of the Falls, from the ledges and overhanging cliffs, were suspended huge icicles, some twenty, some thirty feet in length, thicker than the body of a man, and in colour m i i I-' .1 .1" I'r ijiP'" il I !ii Hi WINTER STUDIES. of a paly green, like the glaciers of the Alps ; and all the crags helow, which projected from the boiling eddying waters, were encrusted, and in a manner built round with ice, which had formed in'„o immense crystals, like basaltic columns, such as I have seen in the pictures of Staffa and the Giant's Causeway; and every tree, and leaf, and branch, fringing the rocks and ravines, was wrought in ice. Oh them, and on the wooden buildings erected near the Table Rock, the spray from the cataract had accumu- lated and formed into the most beautiful crystals and tracery work; they looked like houses of glass, welted and moulded into regular and ornamental shapes, and hung round with a rich fringe of icy points. Wherever we stood we were on unsafe ground, for the snow, when heaped up as now to the height of three or four feet, frequently slipped in masses from the bare rock, and on its surface the spray, for ever fall- ing, was converted into a sheet of ice, smooth, compact, and glassy, on which I could not have stood a moment without my crampons. It was NIAGARA IN WINTER. 91 1 A 1 ! i : 1!, 1 ^ very fearful, and yet I could not tear myself away, but remained on the Table Rock, even on the \'ery edge of it, till a kind of dreamy fasci- nation came over me ; the continuous thunder, and might and movement of the lapsing waters, held all my vital spirits bound up as by a spelL Then, as at last I turned away, the descending sun broke out, and an Iris appeared below the American Fall, one extremity resting on a snow mound; and motionless there it hung in the midst of restless terrors, its beautiful but rather pale hues contrasting with the death-like colour- less objects around ; it reminded me of the faint ethereal smile of a dying martyr. We w&^ 'ered about for nearly four hours, and then returned to the hotel : there my good- natured escort from Toronto, Mr. Campbell, was waiting to conduct us to his house, which is finely situated on an eminence not far from the great cataract We did not know, till we arrived there, that the young and lovely wife of our host had been confined only the day before. This event had been concealed from us, lest we ' fi m i i t i i t IP I 1 ' -I !ii 1 a i , !i ri I'i ', 92 WINTER STUDIES. should have some scruples about accepting hos- pitality under such circumstances ; and, in truth, I did feel at first a little uncomfortable, and rather de trop ; but the genuine kindness of our reception soon overcame all scruples : we were made welcome, and soon felt ourselves so; and, for my own part, I have always sympathies ready for such occasions, and shared very honestly in the grateful joy of these kind people. After dinner I went up into the room of the invalid — a little nest of warmth and comfort; and though the roar of the neighbouring cataract shook the house as with a universal tremor, it did not quite overpower the soft voice of the weak but happy mother, nor even the feeble wail of the new-born baby, as 1 took it in my arms with a whispered blessing, and it fell asleep in my lap. Poor little thing ! — it was an awful sort of lullaby, that ceaseless thunder of the mighty waters ever at hand, yet no one but myself seemed to heed, or even to hear it ; such is the force of custom, and the power of adaptation even in our most delicate organs. NIAGARA IN WINTER. 93 To sleep at the hotel was impossible, and to intrude ourselves on the Campbells equally so. It was near midnight when we mounted our sleigh to return to the town of Niagara, and, as I remember, I did not utter a word during the whole fourteen miles. ITie air was still, though keen, the snow lay around, the whole earth seemed to Llumber in a ghastly, calm repose ; but the heavens were wide awake. There the Aurora Borealis was holdini? her revels, and dancing and flashing, and varying through all shapes and all hues — pale amber, rose tint, blood red — and the stars shone out with a fitful, restless brilliance ; and every now and then a meteor would shoot athwart the skies, or fall to earth, and all around me was wild, and strange, and exciting — more like a fever dream than a reality. To-day I am suffering, as might be expected, with pain and stiffness, unable to walk a(;ross the room ; but the pain will pass : and on the whole I am glad I have made this excursion. The Falls did not make on my mind the impres- :iMri)j I ' ! jf ' ,: if If. u i ■'ill 94 WINTER STUDIES. sion I had anticipated, perhaps for that reason, even because I had anticipated it. Under dif- ferent circumstances it might have been other- wise ; but " it was sung to me in my cradle," as the Germans say,* that I should live to be disappointed — even in the Falls of Niagara. Toronto, February 7. Mr. B. gave me a seat in his sleigh, and after a rapid and very pleasant journey, during which I gained a good deal of information, we reached Toronto yesterday morning. The road was the same as before, with one deviation however — it was found expedient to cross Burlington Bay on the ice, about seven miles over, the lake beneath being twenty, and five-and-twenty fathoms in depth. It was ten o'clock at night, and the only light was that re- * " So war mir's in der Wiege gesiingen," is a com- mon phrase in the north of Germany to express some- thing to which we are seemingly predestined. eason, ler dif- other- radle," to be ra. ary 7. ;h, and during ion, we ith one lient to it seven ty, and (vas ten that re- s a coin- ss some- TREES. 95 fleeted from the snow. The beaten track, from which it is not safe to deviate, was very narrow, and a man, in the worst, if not the last stage of intoxication, noisy and brutally reckless, was driving before us in a sleigh. All this, with the novelty of the situation, the tremendous crack- ing of the ice at every instant, gave me a sense of apprehension just sufficient to be exciting, rather than very unpleasant, though I will con- fess to a feeling of relief when we were once more on the solid earth. B. is said to be a hard, active, clever, prac- tical man. I liked him, and thought him intel- ligent and good-natured : we had much talk. Leaving his servant to drive, he would jump down, stand poised upon one of the runners, and, thus gliding smoothly along, we con- versed. It is a remarkable fact, with which you are probably acquainted, that when one growth of timber is cleared from the land, another of quite a different species springs up spontaneously in its place. Thus, the oak or the beech succeeds 1 f 'I 11 i. !( Ifl t If ^6 WINTER STUDIES. to the pine, and the pine to the oak or maple. This is not accounted for, at least I have found no one yet who can give me a reason for it. We passed by a forest lately consumed by fire, and I asked why, in clearing the woods, they did not leave groups of the finest trees, or even single trees, here and there, to embellish the country ? But it seems that this is impossible — for the trees thus left standing, when deprived of the shelter and society to which they have been accustomed, uniformly perish— which, for mine own poor part, I thought very natural. A Canadian settler hates a tree, regards it as his natural enemy, as something to be destroyed, eradicated, annihilated by all and any means. The idea of useful or ornamental is seldom associated here even with the most magnificent timber trees, such as among the Druids had been consecrated, and among the Greeks would have sheltered oracles and votive temples. The beautiful faith which assigned to every tree of the forest its guardian nymph, to every leafy grove its tutelary divinity, would find no vota- TREES. 97 ries here. Alas ! for the Dryads and Hama- dryads of Canada I There are two principal methods of killing trees in this country, besides the quick, un- failing destruction of the axe; the first by setting fire to them, which sometimes leaves the root uninjured to rot gradually and unseen, or be grubbed up at leisure, or, more generally, there remains a visible fragment of a charred and blackened stump, deformed and painful to look upon : the other method is slower, but even more effect ual ; a deep gash is cut through the bark into the stem, quite round the bole of the tree. This prevents the circulation of the vital juices, and by degrees the tree droops and dies. This is technically called ringing timber. Is not this like the two ways in which a woman''s heart may be killed in this world of ours — by passion and by sorrow ? IJut better far the swift fiery death than this " ringing," as thpy call it ! VOL. I. P i ^tl! ) i ll ; i *.}..■■ w til ;'• ii [ ^'■. I 1 k n M i. 98 WINTER STUDIES. February 17. " There is no society in Toronto," is what I hear repeated all around me — even by those who compose the only society we have. " But," you will say, " what could be expected in a remote town, which forty years ago was an un- inhabited swamp, and twenty years ago only began to exist?" I really do not know what I expected, but I will tell you what I did not ex- pect. I did not expect to find here in this new capital of a new country, with the boundless forest within half a mile of us on almost every side, — concentrated as it were the worst evils of our old and most artificial social system at home, with none of its agreme7is, and none of its advantages. Toronto is like a fourth or fifth rate provincial town, with the pretensions of a capital city. We have here a petty colo- nial oligarchy, a self-constituted aii.'tocracy, based upon nothing real, nor even upon any- thing imaginary ; and we have all the mutual jealousy and fear, and petty gossip, and mutual meddling and mean rivalship, which are com- SOCIETY AT TORONTO. 99 mon in a small society of which the members are well known to each other, a society com- posed, like all societies, of many heterogeneous particles; but as these circulate within ver}' confined limits, there is no getting out of the way of what one most dislikes : we must ne- cessarily hear, see, and passively endure much that annoys and disgusts any one accustomed to the independence of a large and liberal society, or the ease of continental life. It is curious enough to see how quickly a new fashion, or a new folly, is imported from the old country, and with what difficulty and delay a new idea finds its way into the heads of the people, or a new book into their hands. Yet, in the midst of all this, I cannot but see that good spirits and corrective principles are at work ; that pro- gress is making : though the march of intellect be not here in double quick time, as in Europe, it does not absolutely stand stock-still. There reigns here a hateful factious spirit in political matters, but for the present no public or patriotic feeling, no recognition of general F 2 t > It i ■■"-T ' ] , ■> < i 1 t -t •1 it » li 'i I ' )f|9 u ;: ? t . 1 ; M' : I ff i I'l I! Ill n i.E| if, in :| .U' 100 WINTER STUDIES. or generous principles of policy : as yet I have met with none of these. Canada is a colony, not a country ; it is not yet identified with the dearest affections and associations, remem- brances, and hopes of its inhabitants : it is to them an adopted, not a real mother. Their love, their pride, are not for poor Canada, but for high and happy England ; but a few more generations must change all this. We have here Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, so called ; but these words do not signify ex- actly what we mean by the same designations at home. You must recollect that the first settlers in Upper Canada were those who were obliged to fly from the United States during the revolu- tionary war, in consequence of their attachment to the British government, and the soldiers and non-commissioned officers who had fought during the war. These were recompensed for their losses, sufferings, and services, by grants of land in Upper Canada. Thus the very first elements out of which our social system was framed, were POLITICS AND I'AUTIES. 101 * I r repugnance and contempt for the new institu- tions of the United States, and a dislike to the people of that country, — a very natural result of foregone causes ; and thus it has happened that the slightest tinge of democratic, or even liheral principles in politics, was for a long time a sufficient impeachment of the loyalty, a stain upon the personal character, of those who held them. The Tories have therefore been hitherto the influential party ; in their hands we. find the government patronage, the principal offices, the sales and grants of land, for a long series of years. Another party, professing the same boundless loyalty to the mother country, and the same dislike for the principles and institutions of their Yankee neighbours, may be called the Whigs of Upper Canada ; these look with jea- lousy and scorn on the power and prejudices of the Tory families, and insist on the necessity of many reforms in the colonial government. Many of these are young men of talent, and professional men, who find themselves shut out 'i V ; ' 102 WINTER STUDIES. fi! from what they regard as their fair proportion of social consideration and influence, such as, in a small society like this, their superior educa- tion and character ought to command for them. Another set are the Radicals, whom I gene- rally hear mentioned as " those scoundrels," or " those rascals,*" or with some epithet expres- sive of the utmost contempt and disgust. They are those who wish to see this country erected into a republic, like the United States. A few among them are men of talent and education, but at present they are neither influential nor formidable. There is among all parties a general tone of complaint and discontent — a mutual dis- trust — a languor and supineness — the causes of which I cannot as yet understand. Even those who are enthusiastically British in heart and feeling, who sincerely believe that it is the true interest of the colony to remain under the control of the mother country, are as discontented as the rest : they bitterly de- nounce the ignorance of the colonial ofiicials at m wh I'OUTICS. 103 home, with regard to the true interests of the country : they ascribe the want of capital for improvement on a large scale to no mistrust in the resources of the country, but to a want of conlidence in the measures of the government, and the security of property. In order to understand something of the feeli.igs which prevail here, you must bear in mind the distinction between the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. The project of uniting them once more into one legislature, with a central metropolis, is most violently op- posed by those whose i)ersonal interests and convenience would suffer materially by a change in the seat of government. I have heard some persons go so far as to declare, that if the union of the tv.'o provinces were to be established by law, it were sufficient to absolve a man from his allegiance. On the other hand, the measure has powerful advocates in both provinces.* It seems, on looking over the map of this vast and mag- * A very clever paper on this subject was published in the Quebec Mercury, Sept. lith, 1837. i '.■v' 1 ■>.. , ' '■ ' 'l J i ( V i !:i 104 WINTER STUDIES. iu j; «i; nificent country, and reading its whole history, that the political division into five provinces,* each with its independent governor and legisla- ture, its separate correspondence with the Co- lonial-ofiicc, its local laws, and local taxation, must certainly add to the amount of colonial patronage, and perhaps render more secure the subjection of the whole to the I>ritish crown ; but may it not also have perpetuated local dis- tinctions and jealousies — kept alive divided in- terests, narrowed the resources, and prevented the improvement of the country on a large and general scale ? But I had better stop here, ere I get beyond my depth. I am not one of those who opine sagely, that women have nothing to do with politics. On the contrary ; but I do seriously think that no one, be it man or woman, ought to talk, much less write, on what they do not un- derstand. Not but that I have my own ideas on these matters, though we were never able * Viz. Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward's Island. li m m< POLITICS. 105 to make out, either to my own satisfaction or to yours, whether I am Whig or Tory or Ra- dical. In politics I acknowledge but two par- ties,— those who hope and those who fear. In morals, but two parties — those who lie and those who speak truth: and all the world I divide into those who love, and those who hate. This comprehensive arrangement saves me a vast deal of trouble, and answers all my own pur- poses to admiration. Ml February 18. Toronto is, as a residence, worse and better than other small communities — worse in so much as it is remote from all the best advantages of a high state of civilisation, while it is infected by all its-evils, all its follies ; and better, because, besides being a small place, it is a young place ; and in spite of this affectation of looking back, instead of looking up, it must advance — it may become the thinking head and beating heart of a nation, great, and wise, and happy; — who knows? f5 U ^s i i 'J \U i 106 WINTER STUDIES. )'■ And there are moments when, considered under this point of view, it assumes an interest even to me ; but at present it is in a false position, like that of a youth aping maturity ; or rather like that of the little boy in Hogarth's picture, dressed in a long-ilapped laced waistcoat, ruffles, and cocked-hat, crying for bread and butter. With the interminable forests within half a mile of us — the haunt of the red man, the wolf, the bear — with an absolute want of the means of the most ordinary mental and moral developement, we have here conventionalism in its most oppres- sive and ridiculous forms. If I should say, that at present the people here want cultivation, want polish, and the means of acquiring either, that is natural — is intelligible — and it were unreasonable to expect it could be otherwise ; but if I say they want honesty, you would un- derstand me, they would not ; they would ima- gine that I accused them of false weights and cheating at cards. So far they are certainly " indifferent honest" after a fashion, but never did I hear so little truth, nor find so little mu- ! I: FIRE AT TORONTO. 107 tual benevolence. And why is it so ? — because in this place, as in other small provincial towns, they live under the principle of fear — they are all afraid of each other, ah'aid to be themselves ; and where there is much fear, there is little love, and less truth. I was reading this morning* of Maria d'Escobar, a Spanish lady, who first brought a few grains of wheat into the city of Lima. For three years she distributed the produce, giving twenty grains to one man, thirty grains to ano- ther, and so on — hence all the corn in Peru, Is there no one who will bring a few grains of truth to Toronto ? ■ 0 February VI. The monotony of this, my most monotonous existence, was fearfully broken last night. I had gone early to my room, and had just rung for my maid, when I was aware of a strange light flashing through the atmosphere — a fire * In the Life of Sir Jamec Ivlackintosh. j r I ! U i- ■i ■ > 108 WINTER STUDIES. '\ in M was raging in the lower parts of the city. I looked out; there was the full moon, brighter than ever she shows her fair face in our dear cloudy England — bright and calm as you now behold her in the Mediterranean, looking down upon the snowy landscape, and the icy bay glittered like a sheet of silver; and on the other side of the heavens all was terror and tumult — clouds of smoke mingled with spires of flame rose into the sky. Far off the garrison was beating to arms — the bells tolling ; yet all around there was not a living being to be seen, and the snow-waste was still as death. Fires are not uncommon in Toronto, where the houses are mostly wood ; they have gene- rally an alarum once or twice a week, and six or eight houses burned in the course of the winter ; but it was evident this was of more fearful extent than usual. Finding, on inquiry, that all the household had gone off to the scene of action, my own maid excepted, I prepared to follow, for it was impossible to remain here idly gazing on the flames, and listening to the distant m FIRE AT TORONTO. ]09 shouts in ignorance and suspense. The fire was in the principal street, (King-street,) and five houses were burning together. I made my way through the snow-heaped, deserted streets, and into a kind of court or garden at the back of the blazing houses. There was a vast and motley pile of household stuff in the midst, and a poor woman keeping guard over it, nearly up to her knees in the snow. I stood on the top of a bedstead, leaning on her shoulder, and thus we remained till the whole row of build- ings had fallen in. The Irishmen (God bless my countrymen ! for in all good — all mischief — all frolic — all danger — they are sure to be the first) risked their lives most bravely ; their dark figures moving to and fro amid the blazing rafters, their fine attitudes, and the reckless- ness with which they flung themselves into the most horrible situations, became at last too fearfully exciting. I was myself so near, and the flames were so tremendous, that one side of my face was scorched and blistered. All this time, the poor woman on whose ^\:i'M' : ■■K I A ll no WINTER STUDIES. •!^w ",!' 1 .»j: ; v)''; shoulder I was leaning, stood silent and mo- tionless, gazing with apparent tranquillity on her burning house. I remember saying to her with a shudder — " But this is dreadful ! to stand by and look on while one'*s home and pro- perty are destroyed ! " And she replied quietly, " Yes, ma'am ; but I dare say some good will come of it. All is for the best, if one knew it ; and now Jemmy's safe, I don't care for the rest." Now Jemmy was not her son, as I found, but a poor little orphan, of whom she took charge. There had been at first a scarcity of water, but a hole being hewed through the ice on the lake, the supply was soon quick and plentiful. All would have been well over, if the sudden fall of a stack of chimneys had not caused some horrible injuries. One poor boy was killed, and some others maimed— poor Mr. B. among the number. After this I returned home rather heart-sick, and nigh to the house a sleigh glanced by at full gallop, on whi'^ii I could just perceive, in the moonlight, the extended form FIRE AT TORONTO. Ill i mo- ity on to her 111! to id pro- juietly, lod will new it ; for the [ found, 16 took water, on the ilentiful sudden ;d some led, and ong the rather a sleigh uld just ed form of a man with his hands clenched over his head — as in agony, or lifeless. Talking this morning of the incidents of last night, several people have attempted to comfort themselves and me too with the assurance, that whatever might be the private loss or suffering, a fire was always a. public benefit in Toronto — a good brick house was sure to arise in the place of a wooden one. It may be so — brick houses are better certainly than wooden ones — safer too; but as a general argument, I never can bear to think that any public benefit can be based on individual suffering : I hate the doc- trine, and am not convinced by the logic. In these days of political economy, it is too much a fashion to consider human beings only in masses. Wondrous, and vast, and all-important as is this wide frame of human society, with all its component elements variously blended — all its magnificent destinies— is it more impor- tant in the sight of God, more fearful, more sublime to contemplate, than that mysterious world of powers, and affections, and aspirations, which we call the human soul ? !1 H i U \ I ' 112 WINTER STUDIES. 11 ; ^i V In what regards government and politics, du we not find the interest of the many sacrificed to the few ; while, in all that regards society, the morals and the happiness of individuals are sacrificed to the many ? and both are wrong. I never can bring myself to admire a social system, in which the honour, rights, or happi- ness of any individual, though the meanest, is made to yield to a supposed future or general good. It is a wicked calculation, and it will be found as inexpedient as it is wicked. We women have especial reason to exclaim against this principle. We are told openly by moralists and politicians, that it is for the ge- neral good of society, nay, an absolute necessity, that one-fifth part of our sex should be con- demned as the legitimate prey of the other, predoomed to die in reprobation, in the streets, in hospitals, that the virtue of the rest may be preserved, and the pride and the passions of men both gratified. But I have a bitter plea- sure in thinking that this most base, most cruel conventional law is avenged upon those who A TRUE STORY. 113 made and uphold it ; that here the sacrifice of a certain number of one sex to the permitted license of the other is no general good, but a general curse — a very ulcer in the bosom of society. The subject is a hateful one — more hateful is it to hear it sometimes alluded to with sneering levity, and sometimes waved aside with a fasti- dious or arrogant prudery. Unless we women take some courage to look upon the evil, and find some help, some remedy within ourselves, I know not where it is to come from. F. told me yesterday a story which I must try to note down for you, if I can find fit words in which to relate it. It is another proof thut the realities of life transcend all fiction. I have known — have seen with these mine own eyes, more of tragedy and romance than I would dare to reveal — and who has not ? F. told me, that when he was serving in the army in the Lower Province, a young ofiicer, one of his own friends, (mentioning his name,) seduced from her parents a very pretty girl. iHr m :hi:l W-! .111 i! ji I M «■■ I I' r.- I' \* il t .( J! 4 I , r1 i: ' r , i f 114 WINTER STUDIES. about fifteen or sixteen. F. knew some- thing of her family, which was respectable, and tried to save her, but in vain. After some months, the officer S. became tired of his victim, and made her over to a brother officer. F. again interfered, and the poor girl did for a time return to her parents, who gladly and gratefully received her ; but she was spoiled for her home, and her home was spoiled for her ; the sources of innocent pleasure were poisoned, and why should we wonder and exclaim, if a woman who has once known the flatteries and caresses of love, find it hard — in-.tat hard — to resign her- self to days and nights, solitary, toilsome, joy- less, unendeared? After a while, the colonel of the regiment found means to allure her again from her home ; he became strongly attached to her, she was faithful and devoted to him, and he took her with him to England. Years had passed away, when S., who had left the army, also returned to England. While he was roaming about London, amusing himself as young men are wont to do after a long ab- A TRUE STORY. 115 seuce from the central mart of pleasure and dis- sipation, he betook himself one evening, after a tavern dinner, to some house of infamt uS resort, and one of the wretched women of the esta- blishment was sent to him as a companion. As she entered the room, S. started from the sofa to encounter in the impudent, degraded, haggard, tawdry thing before him, the poor child who had been his victim in Canada ; but long years of vice and misery had not yet utterly hardened her. They stood face to face for a few seconds, and looked in silence upon each other, (and who can tell what in those few se- conds may have passed through the minds of each ?) and then the miserable girl fell senseless on the floor. He raised her up, and, in the remorse and agony of the moment, ofi^ered her all he had in the world; — poor, poor compensation! He urged her return to Canada :— he would pay all her expenses — place her beyond the reach of want — but it was all in vain. After the first burst of feeling was over. ■Mm :i|jrii! i' 11 li-i:; Tm ! ! 'I I \m '■•} 116 WINTER STUDIES. the wretched girl shook him from her with sullen scorn and despair, and not only refused to return to the home she had disgraced, but even to accept from him anything whatever — and thus she left him. He it was — himself — who described the scene to F. ** Poor fellow !" said F., in conclui«ion, " he did not recover it for a long time — he felt it very much !" Poor fellow ! — and yet he was to be pitied ; he did not make the system under which he was educated. " What became of Captain S. ?' I asked. " O, he married well ; he is now a very re- spectable and excellent man — father of a family." " He has children, then ?" " Yes ; several." « Daughters T " Yes." " No doubt," thought I, " he wiU take care of them.'''' And yet one word more before I throw down my pen. I have wandered far from the fire in King-street — but no matter. WOiMLN. 117 i How often we liear rej)cato(l tlwit most false and vulgar cominon|)]ace, that the rakes and tlie libertines of the other fi<3 know what it means? Can ^she follow \r\\ a man into his daily life, his boii^lit pleasures, hij shameful haunts ? Luckily — or shall I not say unluckily? — she has no knowledge no conception even, of ' this. If the truth were laid open to her, how she would shrink away from all contact with such a being, in the utter disgust which a pure-hearted and pure-minded being would na- • ''' . 5 _ : ; '■ ■ I * ' ,... ■ :\. ■ » 118 WINTER STUDIES. turally feel ! Her idea of a libertine is about as near the truth as poor Minna's idea of a pirate. And so that which is the result of the ignorance, the innocence, the purity of women, is oddly enough converted into a reproach against us. No ; there is no salvation for women but in ourselves: in self-knowledge, self-reliance, self- respect, and in mutual help and pity ; no good is done by a smiling abuse of the " wicked courses " of men, while we trample into irreco- verable perdition the weak and erring of our own sex.' * I cannot forbear quoting here a passage from Harriet Martineau, printed since this little journal was written: — " In the present case, the course to be pursued is to exalt the aims and to strengthen the self-discipline of the whole of society by each one being as good as he can make himself, and relying on his own efforts after self-perfection, rather than on any fortunate arrange- ments of outward social circumstances. Women, especially, should be allowed the free use of whatever strength their Maker has seen fit to give them ; it is GOETHE S TASSO. 119 If'l February 24. " Ce qui est moins que moi, m'eteint et na'as- somme : ce qui est a cott de moi m'ennuie et me fatigue : il n'y a que ce qui est au-dessus de moi qui me soutienne et m'arrache a moi- meme.*" * This is true — how true, I feel, and far more pretily said than I could say it ; and thus it is that during these last few days of ill- ness and solitary confinement, I took refuge in another and a higher world, and bring you my ideas thereupon. I have been reading over again the Iphigenia, the Tasso, and the Egmont of Goethe. Iphigenia is all repose ; Tasso all emotion ; essential to the virtue of society that they should be allowed the freest moral action, unfettered by igno- rance and unintimidated by authority : for it is an un- questioned and unquestionable fact, that if women were not weak, men would not be wicked; that if women were bravely pure, there must be an end to the dastardly tyranny of licentiousness." — Society in America. '■ Mademoiselle de I'Espinasse. "I -. tin 11 ! It 1 I ■ i!/ ; ,8 ■ (I ill ,• h .•:.i > H il iii> r . ::i } i m ' ,1 11. !-- 1 \M j I Ill i^'! ' ; ij[ IK fi-'i 120 WINTER STUDIES. Egmont all action and passion. Iphigenia rests upon the grace and grandeur of form — it is statuesque throughout. Tasso is the strife be- tween the poetic and prosaic nature. Egmont is the working of the real ; all here is palpable, practical— even love itself. I laid down the Tasso with a depth of emo- tion which I have never felt but after reading Hamlet, to which alone I could compare it ; but this is a tragedy profound and complete in effect, without the intervention of any evil prin- ciple, without a dagger, without a death, without a tyrant, without a traitor! The truth of Leonora d'Este's character struck me forcibly ; it is true to itself, as a character, — true to all we know of her history. The shadow which a hidden love has thrown over the otherwise transparent and crystalline simplicity of her mind is very charming — more charming from the contrast with her friend Leonora Sanvitale, who reconciles herself to the project of removing Tasso with exquisite feminine subtlety and sen- timental cunning. CLAVIGO. 1-21 M i i > J, rests —it is ife be- ^gmont ilpable, )f emo- reading it; but ilete in vil prin- without ^ruth of forcibly ; ue to all which a therwise of her from the anvitale, removing and sen- Why do you not finish your translation of the Egmont? who will ever do it as you can? What deep wisdom, what knowledge of human nature in every scene ! And what can be finer than the two female portraits — the imperial, imperious Margaret of Austria, and the plebeian girl, Clarchen? The character of Clarchen grows upon me as I study it. Is she not really a Flemish Juliet, in her fond impatience, her wilfulness, and the energy of resolve arising out of the strength of passion ? And her tenderness for her poor discarded lover, Brackenberg, whom she cannot love and cannot hate, is all so wo- manly natural ! * * « # Iphigenia is an heroic tragedy — Tasso, a poetical tragedy — Egmont, an historical tragedy. Clavigo is what the Germans call a burgerliche, or domestic tragedy (tragedie bourgeoise.) I did not read this plav as I read the Tasso, borne aloft into the ideal, floating on the wings of enthu- siasm between the earth and stars ; but I laid it down with a terrible and profound pain — yes, VOL. I. G ',M t: R-" ■"■ ^ 7 : . .., i! i r, t Iv: 1:1 II III!* 1 r fel I 122 WINTER STUDIES. pain ! for it was worse and deeper than mere emotion. Yet it is difficult to speak of Clavigo as a work of art. The matter-of-fact simplicity of the plot, the every-day nature of the charac- ters, the prosaic sentiments, the deep homely pathos of the situations, are almost too real, — they are brought home to our own bosoms, our own experience, — they are just what, in feeling most, we can least dare to express. The scene between Carlos and Clavigo, in which Carlos dissuades his friend from marrying the woman to whom he was engaged, is absolutely wonder- ful. If Clavigo yielded to any mere persuasion or common-place arguments, he would be a despicable wretch, — we should feel no interest about him, and it would also belie the intellect with which he is endowed. It is to that intel- lect Carlos addresses himself. His arguments, under one point of view — that of common sense — are unanswerable. His reasoning, springing from conviction, is reason itself. What can be more practically wise than his calculations — more undeniably true than his assertions ? His :ii ! CLAVIGO. 12.3 mere iavigo )licity tiarac- omely •eal,— IS, our feeling J scene Carlos woman jvonder- •suasion d be a interest intellect lat intel- uments, on sense springing it can be ilations — ms? His rhetoric, dictated as it is by real friendship, and full of fire and animation, is even more over- whelming from its sincerity than its eloquence j and his sarcastic observations on poor Marie Beaumarchais, on her want of personal at- tractions, her ill health, b^r foreign manners ; on the efi*ect she will produce on society as his wife, and the clog she must prove to his free- dom and ambitious career, are all so well aimed, so well meant, so well founded, that far from hating Carlos and despising Clavigo, we are impressed with a terror, a sympathy, a sort of fearful fasci- nation. Every one who reads this play must acknowledge, and with an inward shuddering, that it is possible he might have yielded to this conventional common sense, this worldly logic, even for want of arguments to disprove it. The only things left out in the admirable reasonings and calculations of Carlos are nature and con- science, to which, in their combination, the world have agreed to give the name of Romance. But never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet G 2 ilB. \:. .. if ii' 1 1 j 124 WINTER STUDIES. was the voice of conscience silenced without re- tribution. In the tragedy, the catastrophe is immediate and terrible; in real life it might come in some other shape, or it might come later, but it would come — of that there is no doubt. I'M !'i. li rJiMlilfi! 'r !' A K; ii (i , February 25. • The accusation which has been frequently made against Goethe, that notwithstanding his passionate admiration for women, he has through- out his works wilfully and systematically depre- ciated womanhood, is not just, in my opinion. No doubt he is not so universal as Shakspeare, nor so ideal as Schiller ; but though he might have taken a more elevated and a more enlarged view of the sex, his portraits of individual women are true as truth itself. His idea of women ge- nerally was like that entertained by Lord Byron, rather oriental and sultanish ; he is a little of the bashaw persuasion. " Goethe," said a friend of mine who knew him intimately, " had no no- IPHIOENIA. 125 :♦,;■.; tion of heroic women" (Heldenfrauen;) "in poetry, he thought them unnatural, in history, false. For such delineations as Schiller's Joan of Arc, and Stauflfacher's wife (in Wilhelm Tell) he had neither faith nor sympathy." His only heroic and ideal creation is the Iphi- genia, and she is as perfect and as pure as a piece of Greek sculpture. I think it a proof that if he did not understand or like the active heroism of Amazonian ladies, he had a very sublime idea of the passive heroism of female nature. The basis of the character is truth. The drama is the very triumph of unsul- lied, unflinching truth. It has been said, that Goethe intended this character as a portrait of the Grand Duchess Louise, of Weimar. The intention of the poet remains doubtful ; but it should seem that from the first moment the resemblance was generally ad- mitted ; and what a glorious compliment to the Duchess was this acknowledgment ! It was through this true-heartedness, this immutable integrity in word and deed, and through no I Iff I ' I"' r j» l! r I if ! ^ i «M 12G WINTER STUDIES. shining qualities of mind, or blandishments of manner, that she prevailed over the angry pas- sions, and commanded the respect of Napoleon, a man who openly contemned women, but whose instructions to his ambassadors auv* mi- nisters always ended with " Soignez les feniuies," a comment of deep import on our false position and fearful power. Fe])ruary 27. I have had a visit this morning from a man I must introduce to you more particularly. My friend Col. F. would have pleased me anywhere, but here he is really invaluable. Do you remember that lyric of Wordsworth, " The Reverie of Poor Susan," in which he de- scribes the emotions of a poor servant-girl from the country, whose steps are arrested in Cheap- side by the song of a caged bird ? 'Tis a note of enchantment— what ails her ? she sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's. The one only dwelling on earth that she loves I She looks, and her heart is in heaven ! A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 127 And how near are human he rrta allied in all natural instincts and sympathies, and what an unfailing, universal fount of poetry are these even in their homeliest forms ! F. told me to-day, that once, as he was turning down a hy- street in this little town, he heard some- where near him the song of the lark. (1 >w, you must observe, there are no larks in Canada but those which are brought from the old country.) F. shall speak in his own words : — " So, ma'am, when I heard the voice of the bird in the air, I looked, by the natural instinct, up to the heavens, though I knew it could not be there, and then on this side, and then on that, and sure enough at last I saw the little creature perched on its sod of turf in a little cage, and there it kept trilling and warbling away, and there I stood stock-still — listening with my heart. Well, I don't know what it was at all that came over me, but everything seemed to change before my eyes, and it was in poor Ireland I was again, and my home all about me, and I was again a wild slip of a boy, lying on my back on ■i ^^ 'S ■- M V , Mi h .1 i ^ ,1 W' i f Ill ■\ :t ■i 1 ( I '^ 128 WINTER STUDIES. the hill-side above my mother's cabin, and watching, as I used to do, the lark singing and soaring over my head, and I straining my eye to follow her, till she melted into the blue sky, — and there, ma'am — would you believe it ? — I stood like an old fool listening to the bird^s song, lost, as in a dream, and there I think I could have stood till this day." And the eyes of the rough soldier filled with tears, even while he laughed at himself, as perfectly unconscious that he was talking poetry, as Mons. Jourdain could be that he was talking prose. Colonel F. is a soldier of fortune — which phrase means, in his case at least, that he owes nothing whatever to fortune, but everything to his own good heart, his own good sense, and his own good sword. He was the son, and glories in it, of an Irish cotter, on the estate of the Knight of Glyn. At the age of fifteen he shoul- dered a musket, and joined a regiment which was ordered to Holland at the time the Duke of York was opposed to Duraourier. His only reading up to this time had been " The Seven lillli'i A SOLDIER OF FOKTUNC. 129 litji^^ Champions of Christendom," and " The Seven Wise Masters." With his head full of these examples of chivalry, he marched to his first hattle-field, vowing to himself, that if there were a dragon to be fought, or a giant to be defied, he would be their man ! — at all events, he would enact some valorous exploit, some doughty deed of arms, which should astonish the world and dub him captain on the spot. He then de- scribed with great humour and feeling his utter astonishment and mortification on finding the mechanical slaughter of a modern field of battle so widely different from the picture in his fancy; — when he found himself one of a mass in which the individual heart and arm, however generous, however strong, went for nothing — forced to stand still, to fire only by the word of command — the chill it sent to his heart, and his emotions when he saw the comrade at his side fall a quivering corse at his feet, — all this he de- scribed with a graphic liveliness and simplicity which was very amusing. He was afterwards taken prisoner, and at the time he was so over- g5 V i i! I I i * ( I . h' nil ■ ( ' i:t. I lit Ill i;. I* i P( ' h 190 WINTER STUDIES. come by the idea of the indignity he had in- curred by being captured and stripped, and of the affliction and dishonour that would fall on his mother, that he was tempted to commit suicide in the old Roman fashion ; but on seeing a lieutenant of his own regiment brought in prisoner, he thought better of it : a dishonour which the lieutenant endured with philosophy might, he thought, be borne by a subaltern, for by this time, at the age of eighteen, he was already sergeant He was soon afterwards exchanged, and or- dered out to Canada with his regiment, the Forty-ninth. He obtained his commission as lieutenant in the same regiment by mere dint of bravery and talent ; but as his pay was not suf- ficient to enable him to live like his brother officers and purchase his accoutrements, the promotion he had earned by his good conduct became, for a long time, a source of embarrass- ment. During the last American war he per- formed a most brilliant exploit, for which he received his captain's commission on the field. A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 101 m Immediately after receiving it, he astonished his commander by asking leave of absence, al« though another battle was expected in a few days. The request was, in truth, so extraordi- nary that General Sheaffe hesitated, and at last refused. F. said, that if his request was granted, he would be again at head-quarters within three days; if refused, he would go without leave. " For," said he, " 1 was desperate, and the truth was, ma^am, there was a little girl that I loved, and I knew that if I could but marry her before I was killed, and I a captain, she would have the pension of a captain's widow. It was all I could leave her, and it would have been some comfort to me, though not to her, poor soul !" Leave of absence was granted ; F. mounted his horse, rode a hundred and fifty miles in an exceedingly short time, married his little girl, and returned the day following to his duties, and to fight another battle, in which, however, he was not killed, but has lived to be the father of a fine family of four brave sons and one gentle daughter. »> l\ j i I! !»l i; ■W "!| ! J i ■ 5 i i te ii '•!. 13-2 WINTEIl STUDIES. The men who have most interested me through life were all self-educated, and what are called originals. This dear, good F. is originalissimo. Some time ago he amused me, and gave me at the same time a most vivid idea of the minor horrors and irremediable mischiet's of war, by a description of his being quartered in a church in Flanders. The soldiers, on taking possession of their lodging, began by breaking open the poor-boxes and ransacking the sacristy. They then broke up the chairs and benches for fires to cook their rations, and these not sufficing, the wooden saints and carved altars were soon torn down. Finding themselves incommoded by the smoke, some of the soldiers climbed up by the projecting ornaments, and smashed through the windows of rich stained glass to admit the air and let out the smoke. The next morning at sunrise they left this sanctuary of religion and art a foul defaced ruin. A century could not make good again the pol- lution and spoliation of those few hours. 'You must not be too hard on us poor soldiers," iC ' { A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. 133 added F., as if answering to a look, for I did not comment aloud. " I had a sort of instinc- tive perception of the mischief we were doing, but I was certainly the only one ; they knew no better,and the precarious life of a soldier gives him the habit of sacrificing everything to the present moment, and a certain callousness to the suffering and destruction which, besides that it ministers to the immediate want, is out of sight and forgotten the next instant. Why I was not quite so insensible as the rest, I cannot tell, unless it was through the goodness of God. When I was a boy, my first feeling, nevt to my love for my mother, was gratitude to God for having made me and called me into being out of nothing. My first thought was what I could do to please him. Now, in spite of all the priest might say, I could not perceive that fast- ing and praying would do Him any good, so I looked about in the fulness of my heart to see what I could do — and I fancied there was a voice which whispered continually, * Do good to your neighbour, do good to your neighbour !* M tw M^ 134 WINTER STUDIES. With SO much overflowing benevolence and fearless energy of character, and all the eccen- tricity, and sensibility, and poetry, and head- long courage of his country, you cannot wonder chat this brave and worthy man interests me ; unluckily, I can see him seldom, his life being one of almost unremitting toil. i i. ; i ; "; f- i I h 1 1 .1 , 1 ( i '( i 'T'l March 1. In the different branches of art, each artist thinks his own the highest, and is filled with the idea of all its value and all its capabilities which he understands best, and has most largely studied and developed. " But,'' says Dr. Chalmers, " we must take the testimony of each man to the worth of that which he does know, and reject the testimony of each to the com- parative worthlessness of that which he does not know." For it is not, generally speaking, that he overrates his own particular walk of art from over- enthusiasm, (no art, when considered sepa- MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. 135 rately, as a means of human delight and im- provement, can be overrated,) but such a one- sided artist underrates from ignorance the walks of others which diverge from his own. Of all artists, musicians are most exclusive in devotion to their own art, and in the want of sym- pathy, if not absolute contempt, for other arts. A painter has more sympathies with a musician, than a musician with a painter. Vernet used to bring his easel into Pergolesi's room to paint beside his harpsichord, and used to say that he owed some of his finest skies to the in- spired harmonies of his friend. Pergolesi never felt, perhaps, any harmonies but those of his own delicious art. ^' Aspasia, he who loves not music is a beast of one species, and he who overloves it is a beast of another, whose brain is smaller than a nightingale's, and his heart than that of a lizard !" I refer you for the rest to a striking pas- sage in Landor's '* Pericles and Aspasia," con- taining a most severe philippic, not only against the professors, but the profession, of music, ri' '4 !i! i'l nji! nil ml I' , li l:\' •' U^ i '■ ■■( II 136 WINTER STUDIES. and which concludes very aptly, " Panenus said this: let us never believe a word of it !'' It is too true that some excellent musicians have been ignorant, and sensual, and dissipated, but there are sufficient exceptions to the sweep- ing censure of Panenus to show that " impru- dence, intemperance, and gluttony," do not always, or necessarily, " open their channels into the sacred stream of music." Musicians are not selfish, careless, sensual, ignorant, be- cause they are musicians, but because, from a defective education, they are nothing else. The German musicians are generally more moral and more intellectual men than English or Italian musicians, and hence their music has taken a higher flight, is more intellectual than the music of other countries. Music as an art has not degraded them, but they have elevated music. It is impeaching the goodness of the benefi- cent Creator to deem that moral evil can be in- separably connected with any of the fine arts — least of all with music — the soul of the physical, as love is of the moral, universe. MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. 137 ,.1 The most accomplished and intellectual musi- cian I ever met with is Felix Mendelsohn. I do not recollect if it were himself or some one else who told me of a letter which Carl von Weber had addressed to him, warning him that he never could attain the highest honours in his profession without cultivating the virtues and the decencies of life. " A great artist," said Weber, " ought to be a good man." While I am " i' the vein,"" I must give you a few more musical reminiscences before my fingers are quite frozen. I had once some conversation with Thalberg and Felix Mendelsohn, on the unmeaning names which musicians often give to their works, as Concerto in F, Concerto in B b. First Symphony, Second Symphony, &c. Mendel- sohn said, that though in almost every case the composer might have a leading idea, it would be often difficult, or even impossible, to give any title sufficiently comprehensive to convey the same idea or feeling to the mind of the hearer. i !*■' 1 138 WINTER STUDIES. ) ^>^l ^^ilfifillifi il- 'i'l But music, except to musicians, can only give ideas, or rather raise images, by association ; it can give the pleasure which the just accordance of musical sounds must give to sensitive ears, but the associated ideas or images, if any, must be quite accidental. Haydn, we are told, when he sat down to compose, used first to invent a story in his own fancy — a regular succession of imaginary incidents and feelings — to which he framed or suited the successive movements (motivi) of his concerto. Would it not have been an advantage if Haydn could have given to his composition such a title as would have pitched the imagination of the listener at once upon the same key ? Mendelsohn himself has done this in the pieces which he has entitled " Overture to Melusina,'' " Overture to the Hebrides," « Meeres Stille und Gliickliche Fahrt," " The Brook," and others, — which is better surely than Sonata No. 1, Sonata No. 2. Take the Melusina, for example ; is there not in the sentiment of the music, all the sentiment of the beautiful old fairy tale ? — ^first, in the flow- MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. 139 ■r ■ I i ' \ ingi intermingling harmony, we have the soft ele- mental delicacy of the water nymph ; then, the gushing of fountains, the undulating waves; then the martial prowess of the knightly lover, and the splendour of chivalry prevailing over the softer and more ethereal nature ; and then, at last, the dissolution of the charm ; the ebbing, fainting, and failing away into silence of the beautiful water spirit. You will say it might answer just as well for Ondine ; but this signi- fies little, provided we have our fancy pitched to certain poetical associations pre-existing in the compo8er''s mind. Thus, not only poems, but pictures and statues, might be set to music. I suggested to Thalberg as a subject the Aurora of Guido. It should begin with a slow, sub- dued, and solemn movement, to express the slumbrous softness of that dewy hour which precedes the coming of the day, and which in the picture broods over the distant landscape, still wrapt in darkness and sleep ; then the stealing upwards of the gradual dawn; the brightening, the quickening of all life; the I i ■ ■! ; 'I ' (: J . ' . , , , 140 WINTER STUDIES. ■M if? awakening of the birds, the burst of the sun- light, the rushing of the steeds of Hyperion through the sky, the aerial dance of the Hours, and the whole concluding with a magnificent choral song of triumph and rejoicing sent up from universal nature. And then in the same spirit — no, in his own grander spirit — I would have Mendelsohn im- proviser the Laocoon. There would be the pomp and procession of the sacrifice on the sea- shore; the flowing in of the waves; the two serpents which come gliding on their foamy crests, wreathing, and rearing, and undulating ; the horror, the lamentation, the clash of con- fusion, the death-struggle, and, after a deen pause, the wail of lamentation, the funereal march ; — the whole closing with a hymn to Apollo. Can you not just imagine such a piece of music, and composed by Mendelsohn? and can you not fancy the possibility of setting to music, in the same manner, Raffaelle's Cupid and Psyche, or his Galatea, or the group of the Niobe ? Niobe would be a magnificent subject DR. JOHNSON. 141 either for a concerto, or for a kind of mytholo- gical oratorio. Turning over Boswell to-day, I came upon this passage : Johnson says, " I do not commend a society where there is an agreement that what would not otherwise be fair shall be fair ; but I maintain that an individual of any society who practises what is allowed, is not dishonest." What say you to this reasoning of our great moralist ? does it not reduce the whole moral law to something merely conventional ? In another place. Dr. Johnson asks, " What proportion does climate bear to the complex system of human life ?" I shiver while 1 an- swer, " A good deal, my dear Doctor, to some individuals, and yet more to whole races of men. 11 He says afterwards, " I deal more in notions than in facts." And so do I, it seems. He talks of " men being held down in con- 1 ' 4 i h, ij I 1 Ji II /i II il" i '. • , . i 142 WINTER STUDIES. '\'ii versation by the presence of women" — held up rather, where moral feeling is concerned ; and if held down where intellect and social interests are concerned, then so much the worse for such a state of society. Johnson knew absolutely nothing about wo- men ; witness that one assertion, among others more insulting, that it is matter of indifference to a woman whether her husband be faithful or not. He says, in another place, " If we men require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honour." Indeed I If, in exacting from us more per- fection, you do not allow us the higher and nobler nature, you do us not honour, but gross injustice; and if you do allow us the higher nature, and yet regard us as subject and in- ferior, then the injustice is the greater. There, Doctor, is a dilemma for you. Of all our modern authors, Coleridge best understood the essential nature of women, and has said the truest and most beautiful things of our sex generally ; and of all our modem au- ! >: •I 1 COLERIDGE. 143 thors, Hazlitt was most remarkable for his utter ignorance of women, generally and individually. Charles Lamb, of all the men I ever talked to, had the most kindly, the most compassionate, the most reverential feelings towards woman; but he did not, like Coleridge, set forth these feelings with elaborate eloquence — they came gushing out of his heart and stammering from his tongue — clothed sometimes in the quaintest disguise of ironical abuse, and sometimes in words which made the tears spring to one's eyes. He seemed to understand us not as a poet, nor yet as a man of the world ; but by the un- erring instinct of the most loving and benevo- lent of hearts. When Coleridge said antithetically, " that it was the beauty of a woman's character to be characterless," I suppose it is as if he had said, " It is the beauty of the diamond to be colour- less ;" for he instances Ophelia and Desdemona ; and though they are colourless in their pure, transparent simplicity, they are as far as pos- sible from characterless, for in the very quality of being colourless consists the character. ■'\\\ i^ m ii':'' 1 144 WINTER STUDIES. Speaking of Coleridge reminds me that it was from Ludwig Tieck I iSrst learned the death of this wonderful man ; and as I, too, had << sat at the feet of Gamaliel and heard his words," the news struck me with a solemn sorrow. I remember that Tieck, in announcing the death of Coleridge, said, in his impressive manner, "A great spirit has passed from the world, and the world knew him not." ! I There are two ladies in Toronto who have conservatories, a proof of advancing wealth, and civilisation, and taste, which you will greatly admire. One of them had the kindness to send me a bouquet of hot-house flowers while I was ill this last time ; and a gift of fifty times the value could not have excited the same pleasure and gratitude. I spread the flowers out on my bed, and inhaled their fragrance with emotions I dare hardly confess — even to you. I had not seen a flower since I left England. No inter- mediate country had been visited. w CONSTITUTION OF CANADA. 145 Yesterday, (March 4th,) our provincial par- liament was prorogued by the governor in state, and I had t rie honour of aaaistingy as the French say, on that important occasion. Now you would not ask me, nor do I feel in- clined, to encumber my little note-book (conse- crated to far different purposes, far different themes) with information to be obtained in every book of travels and statistics ; but it is just pos- sible that you may know as little of our politi- cal constitution and forms of proceeding as I did before my arrival in Upper Canada, and I wish to make the scene of yesterday as intelli- gible and as interesting to you as I can ; so I will give you, in as few words as possible, a sketch of our state machinery. I have mentioned to you (I believe) that the division of the province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada took place in 1791 ; at that time a chartered constitution and a separate ex- ecutive and legislative government were con- ferred on each province: a measure well in- tended, doubtless, but of which the wisdom VOL. I. H 1 1. 1 ' i}.' ) IMIHj ( il Uli ii' 146 WINTER STUDIES. 1% !l was more than doubtful, when we consider the results. Our constitution of Upper Canada seems, at first view, that of the mother country in minia- ture, and identical with it. For instance, we have, as the head of our executive, a governor, subject, in his military capacity, to the govemor- in-chief of Lower Canada, but in all other re- spects dependent only on the government at home, assisted by an executive council ap- pointed by himself; and we have a legislature composed of a legislative council, nominated by the government, and a house of assembly dele- gated by the people. These different branches seem to represent, not unfitly, the sovereign, the cabinet of ministers, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, in England. But there are some important distinctions which tend to secure the dependence of the provincial legislature on the executive govern- ment at home ; for I do not know that our par- liament has hitherto legislated for the colonies. When Sir Francis Head arrived here, the exe- I ■ I CONSTITUTION OF CANADA. 147 cative council consisted of five ; he added three to the number, who were noted Reformers. About three weeks afterwards this executive council addressed to the governor a documeC, in which they assumed as their right precisei/ the same powers and responsibilities as those of the cabinet ministers at home, alleging, that although nomi- nated by the governor, they held themselves re- sponsible to the will of the people. To which document Sir Francis replied to this effect — " that though the constitution of the colony resembled, it was not to be considered as identical with, the constitution of the mother country: — that if the lieutenant-governor stood in place of the sovereign — if, like the sovereign, he could do no wrong, then it would be evident that a miniscry, an executive council, or some other body of men, should be appointed, who might be re- sponsible to the country for their conduct. But tiiis was not the case. The lieutenant-governor was delegated by the king, not as the represen- tative, but as the responsible minister of the sovereign, subject to impeachment for neglect - h2 '• '1 ^ pr ' , ' ^ ' : ,. ' ' ' , 1 . ) ! i f{ i'l*l !■'<■ I it iS ■i 1 1 ■ I ■1 •f f ! a ii 1 • ' i M i 1 r 1 1 If'l I.. Ili'lfi 148 WINTER STUDIES. ing the interests of the people, and liable to im- mediate recal; and that under such circum- stances, to render the lieutenant-governor responsible for the acts of an executive council, which was responsible only to the people, was a manifest injustice, as well as an anomaly." All which seems to me a very clear case as thus stated. The governor also denied not only any right or power of his own to alter one letter or iota of the constitution, but all power in the united legislature of Upper Canada to alter or improve the political constitution of the country as by law established, this power resting only with the executive in England. From all which it appears, as far as I can understand, that the government of this province is not derived from the people who inhabit it, nor responsible to them or their delegates. Immediately on receiving this answer, the six councillors who had presented the document or remonstrance above mentioned, resigned their seats in the council, and Sir Francis immediately appointed four others. The president of the CONSTITUTION OF CANADA, 149 executive council— that is, the Premier of our cabinet of ministers — is Mr. Sullivan. The legislative council varies in number : at present there are, I believe, thirty members. Of these, twenty-one are Scotch and Canadians, and nine English, Irish, [and Americans. They represent the aristocracy of the country, but differ from the House of Lords in not being hereditary ; they are nominated for life by the governor. The speaker is the Chief Justice Robiiison, a Tory in politics, and a very able and accomplished man. The House of Assembly consists of the dele- gates of the people, the number increasing with the population. As soon as the number of in- habitants in a town or county amounts to a certain number fixed by law, they ha\ e the right of choosing one or two representatives in parlia- ment. The House of Assembly consisted, in 1831, of about forty members. At present there are twenty-two counties which send each two mem- bers to parliament ; three counties which send only one member ; and the four ridings of York, i i. I m i ■ ' \H W. i '. V \ i:' 4 i^ II : fl ii i ':\ •i' .4 ii5 ; I' ■1 ' V\^: i 160 WINTER STUDIES. legislative council have entered a formal protest against this Act ; they objected that half of the lands which had been granted for the erection of free grammar schools throughout the different districts, amounting to two hundred and twenty- five thousand acres, had been given up to the endowment of the university, and that these free schools not being yet erected, this was a misapplication of the school-lands ; and that after such two hundred and twenty-five thousand acres had been applied to the uses of the university, the residue of the school-lands would not suffice for the purpose of erecting free seminaries, being of a bad quality ; nearly eighty thousand acres of the lands originally allotted for the mainte- nance of schools having been exchanged for other lands of a worse quality, and less eligibly situated : that the benefits of a good education, instead of being equally diffused through the province, were confined to one large and expen- sive establ^ihment — too expensive for the popu- lation and wants of the country." Notwithstanding these objections, and the ; ! ; , ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURE. 161 others made by the Tory and high church party, the Act has passed after vehement debates, and I presume that the erection of the new university will be commenced forthwith. Another act was for the establishment of agri- cultural societies, and the encouragement of agriculture in the several districts. There are already agricultural societies in one or two dis- tricts, and whenever a certain sum of money was subscribed by the people, for such a pur- pose, the government assisted them with a fur- ther sum of one hundred pounds and upwards. Various bills were passed, voting sums of money for the mending of roads ; the improve- ment of the harbours and light-houses on the lakes; the completion of the great Welland Can.al, which unites Lake Ontario with Lake Erie ; and the opening of a great northern and western railway to connect Lake Huron with Lake Ontario. All this is very well; but, as H. said this morning, where is the money to come from? It has become difficult to raise loans ; and individuals do not willingly specu- it m n rHrii « I i II- i I 162 WINTER STUDIES. late in this country. That all these things will be done at some time or other is certain — cer- tain as that the sun holds his course in heaven ; but some changes must take place before spe- culation on a large scale becomes either secure or profitable. A very important act was one introducing an improved system into the land-granting depart- ment ; but the law, as explained to me, remains defective : all the arrangements of our domestic policy are such as to render it difficult and in- expedient for aliens to buy or hold land in this province, and even to British subjects the terms are not so favourable as in the United States. Mi. Prince brought in a bill this ses- sion for encouraging settlers from all parts of the world, permitting aliens to acquire and hold lands on easier terms than at present, and to claim the rights of citizenship after a three years' residence. " Every one," said he, " knows well, though I am almost afraid to mention it in this place, that countless numbers of German, Swiss, and ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURE. 163 even British emigrants passed, during the sum- mer of 1836, through Canada to the western parts of the United States, and that none could be pre- vailed oil to stop and settle in this province, though the fertility of the lands, and all other natural advantages, are confessedly greater here, and the distance saved from five to seven hundred miles."* This bill was violently opposed, upon the ground that it would introduce, as settlers, an immense number of foreigners hostile to the principles of the British constitution. None denied that it would introduce both population and capital, and that " men, v/omen, and money,'' being the three wants of the country, would * The usual route of the emigrants to the New Western States is through the State of New York by the Erie Canal, passing the Niagara River at Queenston, and then through the finest parts of Upper Canada to Detroit, in Michigan. The number of the emigrants and settlers who passed through Canada to the Western States, in 1835 and 1836, has been esti- mated at 200,000. : 1, 1 ■■i«^. li: k Mt 11'M M 'Ir it » » !: !;i tl lH^ 'ifr^l' ill ;f|: n 164 WINTER STUDIES. tend to supply these wants. With regard to the danger to our constitution from the admis- sion of aliens educated in different principles, one memher made some shrewd and pertinent observations, in a very homely style. " We profess," said he, " to desire emigration, yet we prohibit virtually nine-tenths of the world from setting their foot on our shores ; and why? because these foreigners, naturally republicans, would naturally overturn our institutions. Now all foreigners are not republicans ; the Swiss, Prussians and other Germans, who pass through our country in multitudes, and cannot be per- suaded to set up their rest here, are more friendly to our British institutions than to those of the United States ; and if it were otherwise, it is a poor compliment to our government and institutions to say that they suffer from com- parison, and that they who have enjoyed any other will not endure existence under ours. We are told that the Americans offer every in- ducement to foreigners and British subjects to settle in their new states : and we do not find I- 1 1, -^ ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURE, 165 jr ours. that the monarchical predilections of these emi- grants lead them to disturb the government of their new country," &c. &c. This bill passed the House of Assembly, and was lost in the Legislative Council. The fate of Texas vi^as adduced as an example of the con- sequences of suffering foreign capitalists to speculate in the lands of Canada; but every one agrees that something must be done to attract to the province emigrants of a higher grade than the Scotch and Irish paupers who now locate themselves on small portions of land, and who aid but little in developing the immense resources of this magnificent country. It is in the second generation that this class of people make useful and eligible settlers. The vital question of the clergy reserves re- mains as yet unsettled by law ; the motion for establishing fifty-seven endowed rectories within the province, exercising all powers, and privi- leges, and jurisdiction, which by the ecclesias- tical law belongs to the Church of England, gave rise to a most violent and abusive debate J: 'M |:l'i^ -I 1 H I' l: li'i:. Ml' 1^ fill s ', Li ! 'I-,: I n i;' 1C6 WINTER STUDIES. in the House of Assembly, which ended in the motion being lost ; but the House resolved, that " the rights acquired under the patents, by which certain rectories have already been en- dowed, should be considered inviolate."" An Act, for a limited time, to impose an ad- ditional duty on licenses to vend spirituous liquors can do but little good in the present state of society here. You might as well think to dam up a torrent with a bundle of reeds, or put out a conflagration with a cup of water, as attempt to put down drunkenness and vice by such trifling measures. I was in hopes that some Act would have passed this session for the erection of a provin- cial lunatic asylum. At present these unfortu- nate persons either wander about uncared for, or are shut up in the jails. Instances are known of pauper lunatics straying into the forests, and perishing there. Tlie fate of those confined in the prisons is not better; the ma- lady is prolonged and aggravated by the horrid species of confinement to which, in such places. in the solved, [its, by Bn en- an ad- rituous present I think icds, or water, ind vice ,d have )rovin- infortu- red for, ices are nto the )f those the ma- horrid I places, I ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURE. 167 these wretched beings are necessarily subjected. A benevolent physician of this place (Dr. Rees) has offered a block of land a few miles from Toronto for the site of an hospital or asylum for lunatics, but at present it seems the inten- tion of the legislature to take the penitentiary at Kingston for a lunatic asylum, and erect another penitentiary on a different plan. In the mean time this dreadful evil continues — must continue for two or three years longer; and think what an amount of individual suffering may be crowded into this period ! When I was at Niagara there was a maniac in the jail there, who had been chained up for four years. Here was misery of the most pitiable kind suffering all the pains and penalties of crime — nay, far more, for the worst criminals had a certain degree of liberty. In the town jail of Toronto four insane persons are at this time in confinement. It must be remembered that this state of things is not worse than that which prevailed in rich and civilised England only a few years ago. Good night ! for my spirits are wearied, and my fingers are frozen. , i i Trnir ^.M ' * i ! 1 ■ 1 i i \ X lij. t : ■ •H ; f. • ! I II II I ; ■li| I lil ^ i i 1- • J < 168 WINTER STUDIES. March 6. As light was the eldest-born principle of the universe, so love was the eldest-born passion of humanity, though people quote Milton to prove that vanity was so — in our own sex at least : and many are the witty sayings on this favourite text ; but they are wrong, and their text misin- terpreted. Eve, when she looked in passionate delight on her own lovely face reflected in the stream, knew not it was her own, and had no- thing else to love ; the moment she found an Adam on whom to lavish the awakened sympa- thies, she turned from the shadow to the reality, even though " less winning soft, less amiably fair :"" she did not sit upon the bank, and pine to death for her own fair face, " Like that too beauteous boy That lost himself by loving of himself j" —while the voice of love wooed her in vain. Vanity in this instance was but the shadow of love. But, O me 1 how many women since the days .|i. FEMALE CHARACTER. 169 irch 6. I of the ission of to prove it least: favourite it misin- issionate 'd in the had no- found an i sympa- le reality, 1 amiably and pine V in vain, shadow of e the days of Echo and Narcissus, have pined themselves into air for the love of men who were in love only with themselves ! Where the vivacity of the intellect and the strength of the passions, exceed the de- velopement of the moral faculties, the character is likely to be embittered or corrupted by ex- tremes, either of adversity or prosperity. This is especially the case with women ; but as far as my own observation and experience go, I should say that many more women have their heads turned by prosperity than their hearts spoiled by adversity ; and, in general, the female character rises with the pressure of ill fortune. Sir James Mackintosh says somewhere, " That almost every woman is either formed in the school, or tried by the test of adversity : it may be more necessary to the greatness of the female character than that of men." And why so? — I understand the first part of this sentence, but not the last. Why should the test of adversity be more necessary to the greatness of the female character than that of VOL. I. I \ \ 1 'i ] 1 i ; I J t ■ I I 1 : If ! Jl 170 WINTER, STUDIES. men? The perpetual, and painful, and strug- gling collision of man with man forms and tries him ; woman has little compulsory collision with woman ; our equals are our most severe school- masters, and the tyranny of circumstances sup- plies this wa?it to women. March 8. Before the languid heart gasp and flutter itself to death, like a bird in an exhausted re- ceiver, let us see what can be done, for some- thing must be done. This relentless winter seems to stiffen and contract every nerve, and the frost is of such fierceness and intensity, that it penetrates even to the marrow of one's bones. One of the workmen told me yesterday, that on taking hold of an iron bar it had taken the skin off his hand, as if he had grasped it red-hot : it is a favourite trick with the children to persuade each other to touch with the tongue a piece ot metal which has been exposed to the open air; adhesion takes place immediately ; even the metal knobs on the doors of the room I care- DEJECTION. 171 !l [I strug- md tries sion with 3 scbool- ices sup- aarch 8. id flutter siusted re- fer some- tiffen and ,s of such ;rates even ne of the aking hold dn off his )t: it is a 0 persuade a piece ot e open air; even the oom I care- fully avoid touching — the contact is worse than unpleasant. Let but the spring come again, and I will take to myself wings and fly oft' to the west ! — But will spring ei^er come ? — When I look out upon the bleak, shrouded, changeless scene, there is something so awfully silent, fixed, and immutable in its aspect, that it is enough to disturb one's faith in the everlasting revolutions of the seasons. Green leaves and flowers, and streams that murmur as they flow, soft summer airs, to which we open the panting bosom- panting with too much life — shades grateful for their coolness — can such things be, or do they exist only in poetry and paradise ? If it were not for this journalising, I should fall into a lethargy — as it is, I could envy a marmot or a dormouse ; and if it were not for my promise to you, I should even abandon this daily noting of daily nothings, of which I begin to be thoroughly ashamed. One day is only distinguishable from another by the degrees of the thermometer. Nor can I, while imprisoned I 2 ) IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I I^IM 12.5 ■so ^^ m^M m m m m £ |£o 12.0 u Mss 1 125 , u 1^ < 6" - > JS VI ^ /. V '/ a Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WBT MAIN STRKT WEBSTER, N.Y. 14SS0 (716) S72-4S03 o ( I 17-2 WINTER STUDIES. by this relentless climate, seek the companion- ship and sympathy which stand aloof — for no other reason that I can guess, but because I come among them branded with notoriety. I wished to throw open my house in the evening, and break or thaw the social frost around me ; but such a novel and unheard of idea would startle all the inhabitants from their propriety. There must be here, as elsewhere, kind-hearted, good people, if only they would be natural, and not afraid of each other — and of poor, solitary me. However, in the strait in which I am placed there is still a remedy. !i.; ''Books, dreams, are each a world; and books, we know. Are a substantial world." A world ever at hand. I must try all mecha- nical means to maintain the balance of my mind, and the unimpaired use of my faculties, for they will be needed. There is no rescue but in occupation—serious and useful occupation, if I can make or find it—trivial occupation, when ii r ipanion- — for no icause I riety. I evening, und me ; ja would )ropriety. [-hearted, Lural, and lUtary me. m placed books, we |ll mecha- ee of my faculties, lescue but iipation, if lion, when GOETHE AND EKERMANN. 173 I can not. The desultory reading in which I have lately indulged will never do ; I must look round for something to try my strength, — and force and fix my attention. To use Lord Byron's phrase, I must get " a file for the ser- pent." March 10. I have found a Jile, or what I will use as such. I shall take to translating. I brought from Weimar Dr. £kermann'*s book,* which, as yet, I have only glanced over in parts : by this time it must be well known all over the world of literature. When I left Weimar, it was not yet published. There my attention was^ strongly directed to this book, not so much by the interest as by the kind of interest it had excited around me. I remember one of Goethe's grandsons turning over the leaves as it lay on my table, and exclaiming with animation — • Gesprache mit Goethe. (Conversations with Goethe.) : \ iy ii ^1 i >f "if f'WII hm f i\- r i » * J 1 m I i '; \ ■ I'. V ^ f 1N^ 1 ' 1 I '1 i B&l < j : 1 ■ t ! 1 •J Br 1 ; R 1 1 i Hi ■ ' 174 WINTER STUDIES. " Es ist der Grosspapa selbst ! da lebt er !— da spricht er!" (It is grand-papa himself! — here he lives — he speaks ! ") Another, habitually intimate with the do- mestic life of Goethe, said, with emotion — " Es ist das buch von liebe und wahrheit." (It is the book of love and truth.) ** Whatever may be in that book," said a dear friend of mine, when she placed it in my hands, " I would pledge myself beforehand for its truth. The mind of Ekermann, at once un- sullied and unruffled by all contact with the world, is so constituted, that he could not per- ceive or speak other than the truth, any more than a perfectly clear and smooth mirror could reflect a false or a distorted image.'* Now all this was delightful ! The sort of praise one does not often hear either of a book or a writer — and so, to read I do most seriously incline. - I read the preface to-day, and part of the in- troduction. In the preface, Ekermann says, very beauti- GOETHE AND EKERMANN. 17' fully, " When I think of the fulness, the richness of those communications which for nine years formed my chief happiness, and now perceive how little of all I have been able to preserve in writing ; I feel like a child, who seeks to catch in his open hands the plenteous showers of spring, and finds that the greatest part has escaped through his fingers." A little farther on he says — " I am far from believing that 1 have here unveiled the whole inward being of Goethe, (der ganze innere Goethe.) One may liken this most wonderful spirit to a many-sided diamond, which in every direction reflected a diflerent hue ; and as, in his intercourse with different persons in different positions, he would himself appear different — I can only say modestly — " This is my Goethe ! " This may be said with truth of every cha- racter, viewed through the mind of another ; of every portrait of the same individual painted by a different artist And not only where we have to deal with marked and distinguished characters, but in the f^i .i-.. i i ) fj i ''i I [ / .i H §H im r -i III M h i. I ; 1; ■ ■ : Ki m j v^m t * ■ , ' \ 'W\ Vtm ' S ^ W mf- V- ; ^- 1 1 1 1 1 i || !: 1 1 i I'i ' i r B S'l 'r 1 11 1 / 1 Sv ' , 1 JL 1 Li ^' ' 17C WINTEK STUDIES. common intercourse of life, we should do well to take this distinction into account ; and, on this principle, I would never judge a character by hearsay, nor venture further, even in my own judgment, than to admit that such a person I like, and such another I do not like. In the last case the fault, the deficiency, the cause, what- ever it may be, is as probably on my side as on theirs; and though this may sound offensive and arbitrary, it is more just than saying such a one is worthless or disagreeable ; for the first I can never know, and as for the latter, the most disagreeable people I ever met with had those who loved them, and thought them, no doubt with reason, very agreeable. Of a very great, and at the same time com- plex mind, we should be careful not to trust entirely to any one portrait, even though from the life, and of undoubted truth. Johnson, as he appears in Boswell, is, I think, the only perfectly individualised portrait I remember; and hence the various and often inconsistent effect it produces. One moment he is an oh- ,i , OOETHE AND EKERMANN. 4 i ject of awe, the next of ridicule : we love, we venerate him on this page — on the next \\^ despise, we abhor him. Here he gives out ora- cles and lessons of wisdom surpassing those of the sages of old ; and there we see him grunting over his favourite dish, and " trundling'''' the meat down his throat, like a Hottentot. But, in the end, such is the influence of truth, when we can have the whole of it, that we dismiss Johnson like a friend to whose disagreeable habits and peculiarities we had become accus- tomed, while his sterling virtues had won our respect and confidence. If I had seen Johnson once, I should probably have no impression but that made on my imagination by his fame and his austere wisdom, and should remain awe- struck ; at the second interview I might have disliked him. But Boswcll has given me a friend, and I love the old fellow, though I can- not love his bull-dog manners, and worse than bull-dog prejudices. Were it possible to have of Goethe as uni- versal, many-sided, and faithful a picture, it I 5 Ym ' {•a <[} ;| » ' '■ ■ 1 •, ; I 178 WINTER STUDIES. would be something transcendent in interest; but I do not think he had a Boswell near him, nor any one, I imagine, who would be inclined to buy immortality at the same price with that worthy ; — at least Ekermann does not seem such a man.''^ * A lady, a near and dear relation of Goethe, who had lived for very many years in the closest commu- nion with him, was pressed by arguments and splendid uffers of emolument to give to the world the domestic life of the poet, or at least contribute some notes with regard to his private conversations and opinions. She refused at once and decidedly. " I had," said she, '' several reasons for this. In the first place, I have not a good memory, and I have a very lively ima- gination : I could not always trust myself. What I should say would be something very near the truth, and very like the truth, but would it be the truth ? How could I send into the world a book, of the exact truth of which I could not in my own conscience, and to my own conviction, be assured ? A second reason was, that Goethe did not die young ; I could not do him any justice he was unable to do himself, by telling the world what he would have done, what he could have GOETHE AND EKERMANN. 179 The account of himself in the introduction is the most charming little bit of autobiography I have ever met with : it is written to account for his first introduction to, and subsequent inter- course with, Goethe, and is only too short. The perfect simplicity and modesty, yet good taste and even elegance of this little history, are quite captivating. The struggles of a poor German scholar, the secret aspirafions, the feelings, the sorrows, the toils, the hardships, of a refined and gentle spirit, striving with obscurity and vulgar cares and poverty, are all briefly but graphi- cally touched, — a sketch only, yet full of life and truth. Ekermann, it seems, was the son of a poor cottager and pedlar, residing, when not en- gaged in his ambulatory traffic, in a little village I !■! Vi < I ' done, or what he had intended to do^ if time had been given. He lived long enough to accomplish his own fame. He told the world all he chose the world to know ; and if not, is it for me — for me ! — to fill up the vacancy, by telling what, perhaps, he never meant to be told? — what I owed to his boundless love and con- fidence?—#^a^ were too horrible!" !J \ I ii! Il^ll '' H! It 180 WINTER STUDIES. near Hamburg. Though steeped in poverty, they seem to have been above actual want, and not unhappy. For the first fourteen years of his life Ekermann was employed in taking care of their only cow, the chief support of the family ; gathering wood for firing in the winter ; and in summer occasionally assisting his father in carrying the package of small wares with which he travelled through t^e neighbouring villages. " All this time," says Ekermann, " I was so far from being tormented by any secret ambition for higher things, or any intuitive longing after science or literature, that I did not even know that they existed.'* In this case, as in many others, accident, as we call it, developed the latent faculties of a mind of no common order. A woodcut of a galloping horse — the excise stamp, on a paper of tobacco which hjs father brought from Hamburg, — first excited his ad- miration, and then the wish to imitate what he admired. He attempted to copy the horse with a pen and ink ; succeeded, much to his own de- light and the wonder of his simple parents ; and i I (iOETHE ANO E HERMANN. 181 then, by dint of copying some poor engravings, (lent to him by a potter in the neighbourhood, who used them to ornament his ware,) he be- came a tolerable draughtsman ; he was then no- ticed and encouraged by a gentleman, who asked him if he should like to become a painter. Now the only idea of a painter which had ever occurred to his father and mother was that of a house-painter; and as they had seen house- painters at Hamburg suspended on dangerous scaffolds, when decorating the exterior of the buildings there, his tender mother begged him not to think of a trade in which he ran the risk of breaking his neck ; and the offer was respect- fully declined. In the family of the gentleman who noticed him, Ekermann picked up a little French, Latin, and music ; and now the thirst for infor- mation was awakened in his mind ; he studied with diligence, and, as a clerk in different offices, maintained himself till the breaking out of the war of deliverance in 1813. He then, like every man who could carry a firelock, enrolled himself 1 1 111 ti ' s : 1 1 , ■ ■ s ■•■:■' -I I J 82 WINTER STUDIES. in the army, and made the campaigns of 1813 and 1814. TTie corps in which he served was marched into Flanders, and there for the first time he had the perception of what pictures are, of all that he had lost in refusing to become a painter, and could have wept, as he says, for very grief and self-reproach. He passed all his leisure in wandering through the churches, gazing on the works of the great Flemish mas- ters. At once the resolution to become an artist took possession of his mind. When his regiment was disbanded, he set to work and placed himself under the tuition of Ramberg, in Hanover. There is something very touching in this part of his history ; he had himself nothing in the world — no means of subsistence ; but he had a friend in tolerable circumstances at Ha- nover; he made his solitary way through the snow on foot to that city, and took up his residence with this friend of his youth, who shared with him his home and slender income. Anxious, however, not to be a burthen longer than was absolutely necessary, he sought employment, GOETHE ANU EKERMANN. 183 worked so hard us to injure his health, and brought himself to the verge of the grave, — in short, he was obliged to give up all hope of studying art as a profession, and he took to literature : here he showed the same indefati<;a- ble temper, and, conscious of his imperfect cdu- cation, he put himself to school ; and, that lu> might be enabled to pay for instruction, pro- cured the situation of a clerk in a public office. At the age of twenty-six he became a scholar in the second class of the Gymnasium, among boys of fourteen and fifteen. Here, he says, the most advanced pupils in the school, far from turning him into ridicule, treated him with every mark of respect, and even assisted him in his studies ; but between his clerk's office and his schooling there remained to him scarce one moment either for food or exercise ; he who was eager to per- fect himself in the classics, remained ignorant of the great laws by which he held his existence ; and we are not surprised to find that the result of these excessive effi^rts was broken health, a constitution almost destroyed, and, in fact, per- M4l!' I ■ II , 1 1 -f i J i i ' ■ > • * i i 1 Lmi 184 WINTER STUDIES. 11 i i: ill :li 111 ' ■: ? ' : ■ ^ll '1 111 1 J. 1 1 \ i'<'l manently injured. In the midst of all this, Ekermann found time to fall deeply in love ; and the wish to obtain distinction and some settled means of subsistence assumed another, a more pleasing, and a more anxious form. But ill health and a desultory education were against him. He wrote a book of poems, which was pub- lished and met with some success ; the profits enabled him to go to a university, where for some time he seems to have entertained the hope of procuring an office, or a professor- ship, which should enable him to marry. Thus year after year passed. In the year 18*22, he wrote his " Beitr'age zur Poesie," (poetical essays,) and sent the MSS., with a modest letter, to Goethe ; the result was, an invitation to Weimar, where he finally took up his resi- dence. Some time afterwards he procured a permanent situation, and was enabled to marry the woman he loved. Shy by nature, and averse to society, ambitious only of literary distinction, having laid up his whole heart, and hopes, and life, in the quiet pleasures of his modest home, GOETHE AND EKERMANN. 185 and in the society of the wife whom he had ob- tained after a protracted engagement of ten years, Ekermann during the next three years might, perhaps, be pronounced a happy man. In the third year of his marriage he lost his amiable wife, who died in giving birth to a son, and since that time he has become more shy and inaccessible than ever — shrinking nervously from the presence of strangers, and devoted to the poor little infant which has cost him so dear. The daughter-in-law and the grandsons of Goethe, who look up to him with a tender reve- rence, he seems to idolise, and has become in some sort the literary Mentor and aid of the young men, as Goethe had been his, long years ago. It is a family tie, every way sanctified, and not, I trust, to be severed in this world by aught that the world can give or take away. The period at which these conversations com- mence was an interesting epoch in the personal existence of Goethe ; it was about the time of his visit to Marienbad,in 182.3, and was marked by the composition of one of his finest lyrical 1 ': i ■i ■ ! 1 '^ '- ^.1 ; 1 I ::\ \ . i \-\ ji \Ht ' u il 'f'ni I ■^1 Mil I ^ 4:' 186 WINTER STUDIES. poems, the elegy in three parts, which he has entitled, " Trilogie der Leidenschaft." He was then seventy-four, but in appearance sixty : his eye still beaming with a softened fire, a cheek yet fresh with health, a well-knit figure, an up- right, graceful carriage, a manner which took all hearts captive. The grand, the beautiful old man ! — old, yet, alas ! still young enough, it seems, in heart and frame, to feel once more, and for the last time, the touch of passion ; not a mere old man's love, such as we usually see it — half disease, or half infatuation — at best a weakness — the sickly flare of a dying lamp; but genuine passion in all its effects, and under its most profound and most painful, as well as its most poetical aspect. Ekermann merely touches on this subject with all possible, all becoming delicacy; but there seems no occasion for me to suppress here the mention of some circumstances not generally known, but which can bring nor shame, nor pain, nor regret to any human being. The object of this love was a young person GOETHE S LAST LOVE. 187 « ''■ lame, nor he had met at Marienbad — one of the daughters of Madame de L w. She has been de- scribed to me as fair and rather full-formed, in- telligent, accomplished, and altogether most attractive. He began by admiring and petting her as a child — then loved her, —loved her against his will, his better sense- one might almost say, against his nature. Th^re was a report in Germany that he had offered her mar- riage ; this is not true ; but it was feared he might do so. He returned from Marienbad changed in manner ; he had lost that majestic calm, that cheerfulness, which inspired such re- spect as well as affection in those around him ; and for some weeks all were in anxiety for the event. But Goethe was a man of the world, and a man of strong sense ; he resolved to free himself from a thraldom of which he felt all the misery, and perceived all the ridicule. He struggled manfully, and conquered; but after weeks of terrible suffering and a fit of illness, during which he was seized with a kind of lethargy, a suspension of all memory, percep- 'i^ 1- 1 ' P'i'' ! ; ■1^ ! '■' ^ ■ : is i! ' A b 1 ' 1 i , 1; 188 WINTER STUDIES. tion, feeling, from which he was with difficulty roused : but he conquered ; and on his recovery betook himself to his usual remedy for pain and grief— hard work. He found " a file for the serpent," and was soon deep in his new theory of colours and his botanical researches. If there be any one in the world so vulgar-minded and so heartless, as to find in this story of a great poet's last love, a subject for cruel and coarse pleasantry, I must say that I pity such a being. In the elegy alluded to, we find no trace of the turbulence of youthful passion — no hopes, no wishes, no fears, no desires, no reproaches, such as lovers are wont to sing or say. It is no flowery, perfumed wreath of flattery thrown at the feet of a mistress, but rather the funereal incense of a solemn and fated sacrifice. It breathes the profoundest, the saddest tender- ness— as if in loving he took leave of love. There is nothing in these lines unbecoming to his age, nor discreditable to her ; but all is grand, and beautiful, and decorous, and grave, in the feeling and expression. Sometimes, when I read it ! I GOETHE S LAST LOVE. 189 and think upon its truth, tears fill my eyes even to overflowing, and my very heart bows down in compassionate reverence, as if I should behold a majestic temple struck by the lightning of heaven, and trembling through its whole massy structure. In other moments of calmer re- flection, I have considered the result with an- other kind of interest, as one of the most extra- ordinary poetical and psychological phenomena in the history of human genius. The first part of this poem is addressed to the shade of Werther, and contains some of the most powerful and harmonious lines he ever wrote ; to the second part he has prefixed, as a motto, those beautiful lines in his own Tasso — Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was ich leide ! Ekermann says, that when Goethe laid before him this singular poem, he found it distinguished above all the rest of his manuscripts, written with peculiar care in his own neatest hand- writing, on the best paper, and fastened with a ! i;^^. i''^ i ii l^hi !• \l m I Ii Ii ^ ;a ■I III il i Ii 190 WINTER STUDIES. silken knot into a red morocco cover. This little piece of fanciful, sentimental dandyism will bring to your recollection the anecdote of Rous- seau binding his favourite letters in the Heloise with ribbon couleur de rose, and using lapis-lazuli powder to dry the writing. March 11. Went on with Ekermann's book, and found some interesting things. Ekermann, after he had spent some weeks at Weimar, tells his friend that he was beginning to feel the favourable influence of a more social life, and in some sort to emerge from the merely ideal and theoretical existence he had hitherto led, &c. Goethe encourages him, and says strikingly, " Hold fast to the present. Every position, (zustand,) every moment of life, is of unspeakable value as the representative of a whole eternitv." m The following passage is at once very touch- ■iM ! GOETHE 8 TABLE-TALK. 191 ing and very characteristic. He seems to be a little melancholy, which was not often the case. " When I look back," said Goethe, " on my early and middle life, and now in my old age reflect how few of those remain who were young with me, life seems to me like a summer resi- dence in a watering-place. When we first arrive, we form friendships with those who have already spent some time there, and must be gone the next week. The loss is painful, but we connect ourselves with the second genera- tion of visitors, with whom we spend some time and become dearly intimate ; but these also de- part, and we are left alone with a third set, who arrive just as we are preparing for our depar- ture, in whom we feel little or no interest. " The world has always regarded me as a pe- culiar favourite of fortune, nor will I complain of my existence taken as a whole ; yet, in truth, it has been little else than weariness and labour ; and I may say that in my five-and-seventy years I have not enjoyed four weeks of peace and comfort — it was the eternal rolling of the stone. i.:i liH I i 11' ■ ' ■ i tflMifM fiii«^ m 192 WINTER STUDIES. The claims upon my time and capabilities, from within and from without, were too many. My only happiness lay in my poetic talents; yet even in this how have I been, through outward things, disturbed, limited, and hindered ! Had I kept myself more apart from public business, and could I have lived more in solitude, I had been happier as a man, and as a poet I had effected much more. Thus, after the publica- tion of my Gotz and my Werther, a certain sen- sible friend said to me in warning, * When a man has once done something to delight the world, the world will thenceforward take care that he shall not do it a second time.' A wide- spread name, a high position in society, are doubtless good things, but, with all my reputa- tion and my rank, 1 could not often do more nor better than give v/ay to the opinions of others ; and this were in truth but a sorry jest, if I had not therewith so far the advantage, that I learned (erfahre) how others thought : aber sie nicht wie ich." How solemn sounds all this from the lips of a GOETHE S TABLE TALK. 193 ties, from ,ny. My fnts; yet outward d! Had business, de, I had let I had I publica- rtain sen- * When a jlight the \^ke care A wide- ciety, are r reputa- more nor others; if I had I learned nicht wie lips of a man, who in years, in fame, in wisdom, in pro- sperity, exceeded so far his fellow-men ! Pointing out to Ekermann some beautiful antique gems, and comparing them with the manner in which the same subjects and ideas had been treated by modern artists, he makes the oft-repeated observation, how far in these later times we fall short of the classical models : even with the highest feeling for the pure iiumi- table grace, the unaffected nature of these relics, even with a conception of how it was all pro- duced, we cannot repeat the results we admire. " Meyer," he added, " used often to say, * If only it were not so diflScult to think ;' but the worst is, that all the thinking in the world will not help us to think —-we must go direct to nature, so that beautiful ideas shall present them- selves before us like God-sends, (freye kinder Gottes,) and call out to us, " Here we'are!" * * He says the same thing otherwise, and better, in another place — "Alles Gescheite ist schon einmal gedacht worden ; man muss nur versuchen, es noch einmal zu denken." VOL. I. K ' .1 i I IWil^'i'ii^ 194 WINTER STUDIES. Tiedgc, in IBOO, wrote a poem on the im- mortality of the soul, entitled " Urania," and Goethe alludes amusingly to the sensation it produced for a time. The " Urania" lay on every table — " Urania" and immortality were the subject of every conversation, and stupid, conceited women discussed round their tea- tables the sublimest speculations on a future life ; all which seems to have excited his impa- tience and his derision. How truly he says somewhere, that the same things are con- stantly repeated in the world ; that there never was anything, any fact, that had only once ex- isted ! How well I recollect when the publica- tion of " Satan," and the " Omnipresence of the Deity," and some other poems of the same stamp, were all the rage in England, and sent our evangelical ladies, some up into the clouds, within precincts where seraphs fear to tread, and some down — never mind where, — it was Tiedge's " Urania " over again. Of course, I speak here only of the presumption and frivo- lity, amounting to profaneness and audacity, or m\ Goethe's table talk. 195 worse, which 1 have witnessed in some women whose heated imaginations outran their reason, as different from the staid, the sober humility of real piety, as the raving Pythoness of old was unlike the meek Mary, " who sat at Jesus' feet and heard his words." Goethe says, in the same passage, ** that he would not himself give up for aught in the world the belief in futurity ; and he thinks with Lorenzo de* Medici, that he who lives not in the hope of a future life may be counted as already dead ; but he exclaims against treating with vulgar and audacious familiarity the divine, the incomprehensible truths, which prophets and apostles touched upon with awe; and I think with him. Goethe has {has ? — I think of him as being now !) 1 should say, that out of a collection of more than seventy portfolios of engravings and original drawings, it was his general custom to have one or two laid on the table after dinner, and to turn them over in presence of his guests and the ladies of his family, discoursing most K -2 ii! 'I (»' f i. , i f 'iiX ■• ' ' }■■ r\f- ■'« !'' ■: ^ • I.' I ^1 ' } I ii llif 196 WINTER STUDIES. eloquently on the different subjects, or pleased to appeal to the natural sense and taste of those around him. It was a divine lecture on art. There are in one of these portfolios some most exquisite etchings and drawings by Roos, the famous animal painter, all repre- senting sheep or goats in every possible atti- tude, wonderful for their truth. " When I look at them," says Goethe, speaking in the fulness of his admiration, ** I feel a certain strange uneasiness. The narrow, stupid, silly, dreamy, yawny nature of these creatures attracts me into a kind of beastly sympathy with them ; 1 look at them till I am half afraid of be- coming a sheep myself, and could almost fancy that the artist had been one ; he had no voca- tion to paint the fiercer quadrupeds, he con- fined himself to the ruminating animals, and in that he did well : his sympathy with the nature of these creatures was born with him — it was innate." What would Goethe have thought of some of Edwin Landseer's pictures — his wild deer — his OOETIIE S TABLE TALK. 197 ii!( dogs ! — the Highland Nurse, for instance, where the colley is watching by the sleeping infant ? Did Roos, or Snyders, or Rubens himself, ever give us the morale of animal life in the fine spirit of Edwin Landseer ? After some other things, Goethe goes on to say, that he thinks a knowledge of the universe must be in na/e with some poets. (It seems to have been so with Shakspeare.) He says he wrote " Gotz von Berlichingen" when he was a young inexperienced man of two-and-twenty. " Ten years later," he adds, " I stood asto- nished at the truth of my own delineation ; I had never beheld or experienced the like, there- fore the knowledge of these multifarious aspects of human nature I must have possessed through a kind of anticipation." Yes ; the " kind of anticipation,'' througli which Joanna Baillie conceived and wrote her noble tragedies. Where did she, whose life has been pure and " retired as uoontide dew," find the dark, stern, terrible elements, out of which she framed the delinations of character '•I I i-l! " f ' M ! I l\ ■ \ 1 . 1 ;.< i * 1 ' ) ■|i 1 «' ■ 1 > ,' ■ , 198 WINTER STUDIES. 1^: ,h- ' ('!' and passion in De Montfort, Ethwald, Basil Constantine ? — where but in her own prophetic heart and genius ? — in that intuitive, almost un- conscious revelation of the universal nature, which makes the poet, and not experience or knowledge. Joanna Baillie, whose most tender and refined, and womanly and christian spirit never, I believe, admitted an ungentle thought of any living being, created De Montfort, and gave us the physiology of Hatred ; and might well, like Goethe, stand astonished at the truth of her own delineation. Farther on, Goethe speaks of the perfection with which some of the German women write their own language, so as to excel in this particular some of their best authors. The same holds good in France and England ; so that to under- stand the full force of Goethe's compliment to his countrywomen, one must recollect that it is no such easy matter to write a fine and clear German style, where there are twenty dialects and a hundred different styles. Prince Metter- nich once observed to me, " What I admire in I I n Goethe's table talk. 199 your language is, that you have one good style in speaking and writing; and all well-bred and well-educated persons in England speak and write nearly alike. Here, in Germany, we have as many different styles as individual writers, and the difference is greater than a foreigner could easily imagine." Yet even this kind of individuality, in point of style, may possibly have a value and a charm, and this will be felt if ever the rules of a good style be so fixed by criticism or fashion, that all Germany will write uniformly. What he says of himself and Tieck is very interesting ; he speaks of him with admiration and kind feeling, but adds, '* that when the Schhgels set up Tieck as a sort of literary rival to himself, they placed him in a false position. I may say this openly," adds this great man, with a dignified and frank simplicity. " I did not make myself: and it were much the same thing as though I should even myself with Shakspeare, who also did not make himselt~ a being far, far above me, to whom I look up with reverence and wonder." V- ■;'■, i! ill If : t (,i, ■ ' I I •1 200 WINTER STUDIES. ' ' ' : 1 ' 1.1 I I 5 Driving home one day from Tiefurt, as the carriage turned, they faced the sun just as he was sinking in the west. Goethe ceased speak- ing, and remained for a few moments as if lost in thought; then rousing himself, he repeated from some old poet — " Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne." He then continued, with a most cheerful and animated expression — " When a man has lived seventy-five years, he must needs think some- times upon death. This thought brings me perfect peace, for I have the fixed conviction that the spirit is immortal, and has a never- ceasing progression from eternity to eternity; it is like the sun, which only seems to set to our earthly eyes, but which in reality never does set, and never ceases to shine." Farther on, Ekermann expresses his regret that Goethe should have sacrificed so much time as director of the theatre at Weimar, and considers that many works were thus lost to the world. To which Goethe replies — " Truly, it is possible I might have written many good POSITION OF WOMEN. 201 things during that time ; yet, when I reflect, I feel no regret. All my productions, as well as endeavours, I have been accustomed to regard as merely symbolical, (that is, as I understand it, leading to something beyond, and significant of something better, than themselves,) and, in point of fact, it was with me as with a po*ter, to whom it is quite indifferent whether he makes pitchers or whether he makes platters of his clay." March 13. Idle to-day, and although I read a good deal, I translated very little, and noted less. Yet the following passage struck me. The conversation turned on the German poetesses, and Rehbein, Goethe's physician, insisted that the poetical talent in women was " ein Art von geistigem Geschlechtstrieb." "Hear him I" exclaimed Goethe; "hear the physician, with his ' intellectual impulse of sex!'" K 5 I" m 'I If"' i i n\ :i-: ! i 202 WINTER STUDIES. %\l: •j it m» 'I :fi ilitii^i ijj m. u III Rehbein explained himself, by observing " that the women who had distinguished them- selves in literature, poetry especially, were almost universally women who had been disap- pointed in their best affections, and sought in this direction of the intellect a sort of compen- sation. When women are married, and have children to take care o^ they do not often think of writing poetry." * This is not very politely or delicately ex- pressed ; but we must not therefore shrink from it, for it involves some important considerations. It is most certain that among the women who have been distinguished in literature, three- fourths have been either by nature, or fate, or the law of society, placed in a painful or a false position ; it is also most certain that in these days when society is becoming every day more artificial and more complex, and marriage, as * This applies more to Germany than with us, and even up to the present time it has required a very powerful reaction of some kind to drive a German woman into the public path of literature. Position of women. 203 the gentlemen assure us, more and more expen- sive, hazardous, and inexpedient) women must find means to fill up the void of existence. Men, our natural protectors, our lawgivers, our mas- ters, throw us upon our own resources; the qualities which they pretend to admire in us, — the overflowing, the clinging affections of a warm heart, — the household devotion, — the sub- missive wish to please, that feels " every vanity in fondness lost," — the tender shrinking sensi- tiveness which Adam thought so charming in his Eve, — to cultivate these, to make them, by artificial means, the staple of the womanly cha- racter, is it not to cultivate a taste for sunshine and roses, in those we send to pass their lives in the arctic zone ? We have gone away from nature, and we must, — if we can, sub- stitute another nature. Art, literature and science, remain to us. Religion, which for- merly opened the doors of nunneries and convents to forlorn women, now mingling her beautiful and soothing influence with re- sources which the prejudices of the world have i A '^ 1 i ■ f- ' "I f ; itift r ill m |ii-'!l I k 't it 204 WINTER STUDIES. I t : • 1^'^^ yet left open to us, teaches us another les- son, that only in utility, such as is left to us, only in the assiduous employment of such fa- culties as we are permitted to exercise, can we find health and peace, and compensation for the wasted or repressed impulses and energies more proper to our sex — more natural — perhaps more pleasing to God; but trusting in his mercy, and using the means he has given, we must do the best we can for ourselves and for our sister- hood. The cruel prejudices which would have shut us out from nobler consolation and occu- pations have ceased in great part, and will soon be remembered only as the rude, coarse bar- barism of a by gone age. Let us then have no more caricatures of methodistical, card-playing, and acrimonious old maids. Let us hear no more of scandal, parrots, cats, and lap-dogs — or worse ! — these never-failing subjects of derision with the vulgar and the frivolous, but the source of a thousand compassionate and melancholy feel- ings in those who can reflect ! In the name of humanity and womanhood, let us have iw uiore I ;; POSITION OF WOMEN. 205 of them ! Coleridge, who has said and written the most beautiful, the most tender, the most reverential things of women — who understands better than any man, any poet, what I will call the metaphysics of love— Coleridge, as you will remember, has asserted that the perfection of a woman's character is to be characterless. " Every man," said he, " would like to have an Ophelia or a Desdemona for his wife." No doubt ; the sentiment is truly a masculine one : and what was their fate ? What would now be the fate of such unresisting and confiding angels ? Is this the age of Arcadia ? Do we live among Paladins and Sir Charles Grandisons, and are our weakness, and our innocence, and our igno- rance, safeguards — or snares? Do we indeed find our account in being " Fine by defect, and beautifully weak ?" No, no ; women need in these times character beyond everything else; the qualities which will enable them to endure and to resist evil ; the self-governed, the cultivated, active mind, I 'I ! I '■ ( 206 WINTER STUDIES. I: lli M' 'in to protect and to maintain ourselves. How many wretched women marry for a maintenance ! How many wretched women sell themselves to dishonour for bread ! — and there is small dif- ference, if any, in the infamy and the misery ! How many unmarried women live in heart- wearing dependence ; — if poor, in solitary penury, loveless, joyless, unendeared ; — if rich, in aimless, pitiful trifling I How many, strange to say, marry for the independence they dare not otherwise claim ! But the more paths opened to us, the less fear that we should go astray. Surely it is dangerous, it is wicked, in these days, to follow the old saw, to bring up women to be " happy wives and mothers ;" that is to say, to let all her accomplishments, her senti- ments, her views of hfe, take one direction, as if for women there existed only one destiny — one hope, one blessing, one object, one passion in ex- istence ; some people say it ought to be so, but we know that it is not so ; we know that hun- dreds, that thousands of women are not happy I;! LORD BYRON. 207 i ;t wives and mothers — are never either wives or mothers at aii. The cultivation of the moral strength and the active energies of a woman's mind, together with the intellectual faculties and tastes, will not make a woman a less good, less happy wife and mother, and will enable her to find content and independence when denied love and happiness. i^ * at * ■I, ' March 12. Got on better to-day. ., Goethe speaks with great admiration of the poems, original and translated, of Talvi, (Ma- demoiselle Jacob, now Mrs. Robinson, and settled, I believe, in America.) There is a great deal about Lord Byron in scattered passages. Goethe seems to have un- derstood him astonishingly well — I mean the man as veil as the poet.* At this time Lord • Lord Byron ist nur gross wenn er dichtet, sobald er reflectirt, ist er eiti kind. J f 208 WINTER STUDIES. I -. ;. I! 1 Byron was turning all heads in Germany, and Goethe, who was flattered by the veneration and admiration of Byron, felt and acknow- ledged his genius. ** He was," says Ekermann, " quite inexhaustible when once he began to speak of Byron," and, as a poet himself, sym- pathised in the transcendent poetical powers he displayed ; but as a philosopher and sage, Goethe lamented the abuse, the misdirection of the talents he appreciated. He reproaches him with the negative, the gloomy tendency of his mind ; he contrasts it with the healthful cheer- fulness of such a spirit as Shakspeare's. Speak- ing of his strange attempt to defend and revive the strict law of the drama with regard to the three unities, he says pointedly, " Had he but known as well how to restrain himself within the fixed moral limits !" In another place he speaks with contempt of the poets, imitators of Lord Byron, " who write as if they were all sick, and the whole bright world a lazar-house." He says, " It is a real misuse and abuse of poetry, which was given to lany, and eneration acknow- Ikermann, began to self, sym- powers he »e, Goethe )n of the lehes him ncy of his iful cheer- 's. Speak- md revive ird to the ad he but elf within )niempt of who write lole bright is a real IS given to GOETHE. 209 us to console us in the struggle of life, and make man more content with the world he Hves in, not less." How entirely I sympathise with Goethe, wiien he breaks out in indignation against the nega- tive and the satirical in poetry and art ! He says, «* When I have called the bad— 6ad, how much is gained by that ? The man who would work aright must not deal in censure, must jiot trouble himself about what is bad, but show and do what is good ;** and this is surely true. He says elsewhere, that when there was doubt and contradiction in his mind, he kept it within himself; he gave to the public only the assured result, (or what he considered such,) when he had arrived at it. This firmness of tone, this lofty and cheerful view of the universe and humanity, strike us particularly in many of Goethe's works. He says himself, that the origin of most of his lyrics was truth ; some real incident, some real sentiment ; and some of his fine moral poems — for instance, those which he has entitled si m ( } I I^IIP'II1 I ! ilj fi 1. i i '. 1 ' ■m m t i . Ill r - 1 1 i; 1 ■ i' ■ 1 , |j|i 1 1^ 1 il y' 210 WINTER STUDIES. " Granzen der Menschheit" and " Das Gcitt- liche," remind me of Wordsworth, in tlie pure healthful feeling, as well as the felicily and beauty of the expression through which it has found a channel to our hearts. He says of Winckelmann, with untranslatable felicity, " Man lernt nichts wenn man ihn lieset, aber man wird etwas." This next is amusing, and how frankly mag- nanimous ! He says, " People talk of origina- lity— what do they mean ? As soon as we are born, the surrounding world begins to operate upon us, and so on to the end. And, after all, what can we truly call our own, but energy, power, will ? Could I point out all that I myself owe to my great forerunners and cotemporaries, truly there would remain but little over !" Goethe could afford to say this I He speaks of Schiller so affectionately, and with such a fine, just discrimination of his powers ! " All in Schiller was high and great — his deportment, his gait, the mould of his limbs, SCIIILLF.K. 211 his least motion, was dignified and grand — only his eyes were soft." And, adds Goethe, " like his form was his talent. We lived together," he says, " in such close, such daily intimacy, so in one another^ that of many thoughts which occur in the works of both, it would be a ques- tion whether they originated with the one or the other." The two great men, thus bound together during their lives, were, after Schiller's death, placed in a kind of rivalship ; and still the par- tisans of the different literary factions dispute where no dispute ought to exist. Coleridge says that " Schiller is a thousand tiiues more hearty than Goethe, and that Goethe does not, nor ever will, command the common mind of the people as Schiller does." I believe it to be true. The reason is, that Schiller lias with him generally the women and the young men, i. e. those whose opinions and feelings are most loudly, most enthusiastically expressed. Goethe, in allusion to thi^^, says playfully, " Now have the public been disputing for these twenty years ii 11 i\^ 212 WINTER STUDIES. ' li. ) which of the two is greatest, Schiller or myself ! Let them go and be thankful that have two such fellows to dispute about !" He speaks of the new school of critical his- torians, who have endeavoured to prove that all ancient history is fable. *' Till now," he says, " the world has be- lieved in the heroism of a Lucretia, a Mutius Scajvola, and has been warmed and inspired by the idea. Now comes some historical critic, and assures us that these personages never had a real existence ; that it is all fiction and fable, invented by the grand imagination of the old Romans. What have we to do with such piti- ful truth ! If the Romans were great enough to invent such things, let us at least be great enough to believe in them !" Here I should think he was speaking more playfully and feelingly than seriously and criti- cally ; and is it not charming ? He goes on — " i used to be delighted with a certain fact in the history of the thirteenth cen- tury, where the Emperor Frederic H. being I t* ■ l ■! I.i HISTORICAL SCEPTICISM. 213 r myself ! have two itical his- ve that all d has be- a Mutius nspired by critic, and iver had a and fable, of the old such piti- lat enough it be great ting more y and criti- ited with a eenth cen- ; II. being engaged against the Pope, all the north of Ger- many lay open to invaders. The Asiatic hordes advanced even into Silesia, where the Duke of Leignitz defeated them ; they turned back to Moravia, where the Count Sternberg beat them. These gallant warriors have hitherto lived in my imagination as the saviours of the German nation. Now comes your historical critic, and he tells me that these heroes sacrificed them- selves very unnecessarily, for that the Turkish army would doubtless have retired of itself — so is a grand patriotic deed lessened and maligned, and one is put horribly out of humour." It is plain that Goethe, like Johnson, did not like to have his fagot disturbed. He adds, farther on, that in poetry this kind of sceptical criticism is not so mischievous. " Pro- fessor Wolf has destroyed Homer, but he could do nothing to the poem itself, for the Iliad is en- dued with the miraculous property of the heroes in the Valhalla, who, though hewed to pieces in the morning fight, always sit down to dinner with whole limbs."'^ Ill ^1 J ■ Ifi 1 .. i ' « it 214 WINTER STUDIES. \m I rl! IS But there is no end to this — I must stop ; yet this about Shakspeare is so beautiful I must have it down. " How inconceivably rich and great is Shak- speare ! There is no motive* in human existence which he has not represented and expressed, and with what ease and freedom ! One cannot speak of Shakspeare, it is all insufficient. I have in the Wilhelm Meister groped about him, but it is mere trifling ; he is no play-writer, he never thought of a stage, it was too narrow, too paltry a space for his mighty spirit : yes, even the great visible universe itself was for him in space too narrow ! " Nay, he is too rich, too mighty. A produc- tive poet should read but onrj piece of his in the year, or he will wreck himself in the vain * The meaning of the word motive, in German criti- cism, should perhaps be explained. It is used to signify any cause out of which the action or conse- quence springs. They have the verb motiviren, and they say of a drama, or any fiction, that it is well or ill motivirt. THE SUPERNATURAL. 215 attempt to reach the unreachable, " I did well," he adds, that in writing ray Giitz and my Egmont, I shook him oiF «iy shoulders. How many excellent German poets have been destroyed through him and Calderon? for Shakspeare," he adds fancifully, " presents to us golden apples in cups of silver ; through the study of his works we get hold of the cups of silver, but alas, we put potatoes into them." I close my book, and so good night ! Where is he now, he who disappeared and could not be lost ? — sitting with his Shakspeare and his Schiller up there among the stars in colloquy sublime ? and Walter Scott standing by with love and thought upon his spacious brow — What a partie carree ! ] i ''^ 1 1 V March 15. This last paragraph, which I wrote last even- ing, sent me to bed with my head full of all manner of thoughts and memories and fancies ; aad not being in a studious mood this miserably I : ■i ..)-. 216 WINTER STUDIES. cold night, 1 draw my writing-table close to the fire, and bestow all my tediousness on you, and if it were twice as much, and you were twice as far off, I would bestow it on you with all my heart — would you not accept the bar- gain ? I have been much busied to-day with domestic matters, for we are preparing to change our re- sidence for a new house never yet inhabited, and now I am alone in my room. I feel tired, and have fallen into a very dismal and fantastic mood. Whence and what are we, " that things whose sense we see not, fray us with things that be not?" If I had the heart of that wondrous bird in the Persian tales, which being pressed upon a human heart, obliged that heart to utter truth through the lips, sleeping or waking, then I think I would inquire how far in each bosom exists the belief in the supernatural ? In many minds which I know, and otherwise strong minds, it certainly exists a hidden source of torment; in others, not stronger, it exists a I ose to the 3 on you, you were I you with \ the bar- th domestic nge our re- ; inhabited, feel tired, nd fantastic hings whose igs that be t wondrous ling pressed art to utter vaking, then each bosom ? In many wise strong :n source of it exists a THE SUPERNATURAL. 217 source of absolute pleasure and excitement. I have known people most wittily ridicule, or gravely discountenance, a belief in spectral ap- pearances, and all the time I could see in their faces that once in their lives at least they had been frightened at their own shadow. The conventional cowardice, the fear of ridicule, even the self-respect which prevents intelligent persons from revealing the exact truth of what passes through their own minds on this point, deprives us of a means to trace to its sources and develope an interesting branch of Psycho- logy. Between vulgar credulity and exaggera- tion on the one hand, and the absolute scep- ticism and materialism of some would-be philosophers on the other, lies a vast space of debatable ground, a sort of twilight region or limbo, through which I do not see my way dis- tinctly. One of the most gifted and accom- plished, as well as most rational and most prac- tical characters I ever met with, once said to me seriously, " I thank God I do not believe in the impossibility of anything." 1 1 i ! ■ % If' : 1 VOL. I. 218 WINTER STUDIES. How far are our perceptions confined to our outward senses ? Can any one tell ? — for that our perceptions are not wholly confined to im- pressions taken in by the outward senses seems the only one thing proved ; and are such sen- sible impressions the only real ones? When any one asks me gaily the so common and com- mon-place question — common even in these our rational times — " Do you now really believe in ghosts?" I generally answer as gaily — " I really don't know ! " In the common, vulgar meaning of the words, I certainly do not ; but in the reality of many things termed imaginary I certainly do. While I was staying at Weimar, in Goethe's house, a very pretty little soiree was arranged for me at Madame d''Alefeldt"'s ; there were no cards that evening ; and seated round a table we became extremely talkative and confidential, and at last we took to relating ghost stories. It should seem that Germany is still like Ireland, the land of the supernatural, as well as the land of romance. There was something GHOST STORIES. 219 3d to our —for that ed to im- ises seems such sen- 5 ? When I and com- i these our r believe in gaily—" I ion, vulgar 0 not; but 1 imaginary in Goethe's Ls arranged Ithere were lund a table ;onfidential, lost stories, still Uke I, as well as something quite delightful in the good faith and the per- fect serieux of some of the narrators, as well as soifte of the listeners — myself included. Baron Sternberg gave us a story of an appa- rition at his sister^s castle in Livonia ; it was admirable, and most admirably told, though, truly, it seemed the last of all apparitions that one would have expected to haunt a castle in Livonia, for it was that of Voltaire. Then the grand Duke gave us the history of a certain Princess of Rudolstadt, whose pic- ture is at Kochberg, and who, in the estimation of her family, had the gift of prophecy, of seeing visions, and dreaming dreams ; but such visions and such dreams — so wild, so poetical, and even so grotesque — shadowing forth the former and future destinies of her family ! and, in truth, the whole story, and the description of the old castle of Rudolstadt, and the old court, and the three old superannuated princesses, like gothic figures woven into tapestry — so stately, and so stiff, and so ugly, and withal so tinged with the ideal and romantic, were given L 2 Ml I 11! iHfi usir WW ^k\M m 11 I. * !J I , > M t r"i ('( ' 220 WINTER STUDIES. I ' with so much liveliness of detail, and so much graphic spirit, that I was beyond measure amused and interested. I thought I saw them before me, and methinks I see them now. In return for this tale, I gave from the best authority that of Crofton Croker, the history of the Irish banshee, and particularly of that identical banshee, whose visitations as the here- ditary attendant on my own family I had pain- ful reason to remember. My banshee pleased universally ; to most of the company the idea was something new, and I have even hopes that it may have inspired Sternberg with a pendant to his poem on King O'Donohue. The conversation turned naturally upon he- reditary apparitions and spectral penances, the fruit of ancestral crimes, on which superstition Grillparzer has founded his fine lyric drama of " The Ahnfrau/' The castle of the W family, in the neighbourhood of Weimar, was men- tioned as subject to this species of ghostly visi- tation. Two individuals present, who had been on a visit at this castle, spoke of the phantom GHOST STORIES. 221 avec connnissance de fait. The present Ba- roness W , who had been brought up mong enlightened and intelligent people, declared herself perfectly incredulous, and after her mar- riage went to inhabit the castle of her husband, in all the assurance that common sense and philosophy could give ; but — so went the tale — it happened that, soon after the birth of her eldest child, she awoke at midnight, and beheld an unearthly being bending over the cradle of her infant — more, as it seemed, in love and be- nediction than with any unholy purpose ; how- ever, from this time they said that she had not willingly inhabited the castle of her husband's ancestors. In the family of the Baron , whose castle is also in the neighbourhood of Weimar, there is a gold ring of marvellous power, given by some supernatural being to a former Baron, with the assurance that as long as it remained in the castle, good fortune would attend the family. Every experiment made of late by un- believing barons to put this tradition to the if 1 r, m: h: -Hi: 1 .: ■ ! \'^ ■¥i- 'fl < t ^a• 226 WINTER STUDIES- hands, it was purchased by the Grand Duke of Baden, and sent as a gift to the poet on that memorable occasion. This clock, like the rest of the furniture of that sacred apartment, re- mains untouched, but on this very night, by some inexplicable accident, just as I arrived at the door, the clock within began to strike — one, two, three, four, and so on to twelve. At the first stroke I stopped, even my breath almost stopped, as I listened. I looked not to the left, where the door opened into that hallowed cham- ber of death and immortality j — I looked not to the right, where the dark hollow of the stair- case seemed to yawn — nor yet before me ; but, with my eyes fixed on the silver relic I held in my hand, I stood quite still. The emotion which bound up my powers in that moment was assuredly the farthest possibly from fear, or aught resembling it — it was only a sound, but it was the same sound and hour which had ushered into the world one of the greateet and most gifted spirits whom God, in his supreme goodness, had ever sent to enlighten the world, and to enlarge GHOST STORIES. 227 the bounds of human delight and improvement ; it was the same sound and hour which sent it to mingle with the great soul of nature, to be A voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; To be a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light. And so in the silence and the loneliness of the night, as those sounds fell deliberately one by one, they seemed to fill the whole air around me, to enter in at my ears and thrill down to my finger ends, and I saw the light tremble which I held before me. But sense and the power of motion returned. In the next mo- ment I was in my room and seated in his chair, with a steady pulse and a calm spirit, glad to breathe again " queen o'er myself," — my rea- sonable self; yet would I not have missed the strange, the overpowering, deliciously awful feelings of those well-remembered moments — no — not for the universe ! Short and tran- sient as they have been, they henceforth be- long to the tissue of my life: were I to live M 1 \ t-t ' i 1 1 ^ ■I H h .^ 228 WINTER STUDIES. a century, I cannot forget them, nor would I dare to give them expression, — if indeed there are words which could express them. # # w , w * t '1 March 16. I was idle to-day, and, instead of going on regularly with my hook, I turned over the leaves, and dwelt upon passages here and there, as people, when they are nice and are not hungry, capriciously pick out tit-bits. The attempt to note down all that I would wish to retain in my memory of this delightful book, I find hopeless, quite. At first I fancied it something like Boswell : nothing can be more unlike. The difference between Dr. Johnson and Goethe is not greater than the difference between Ekermann and Boswell. Boswell's book is delicious, but the man's personal charac- ter is always in the way ; we profit often by his indiscretion, but his indiscriminate triflitig as often disgusts. Johnson, in his book, is the 1 '! GOETHE AND EKERMANN. 229 " great Colossus " bestriding this narrow world, with a Pharos in one hand, and a bundle of darts in the other; but in Ekermann's book Goethe is nothing less than the " Olympian Jupiter," seated at his table and dispensing nectar and ambrosia, while he plays child-like with his own lightnings. * Boswell's meddling coxcombry and servility sometimes place his great patron in no very dignified position ; and the well- known similes of the monkey on the bear's back, and the puppy in the lion's den, seem hardly too severe. Were 1 to find a simile for Ekermann, I should say he is like a thrush singing under the wing of a great eagle, sometimes overshadowed by his mighty master, but not overdazzled, not overawed by the " terrors of his beak and lightning of his eyes," — always himself — and, as himself, always amiable, always * There is now a melancholy propriety in the basso relievo over the entrance to Goethe's apartment, in his house at Weimar: it represents the empty throne of Jupiter, with the eagle cowering at its foot, and the thunderbolts lying extinguished and idle. % n Vi r I 230 WINTER STUDIES. I J' ' 1 . respectable. His simplicity, his uprightness, and his gentleness, his poetical and artist-like feeling, are always delightful : one must love him for his own sake as well as Goethe's. Yet a translation of this book would hardly please in England ; it deals in " notions more than in facts," and in speculations and ideas, more than in anecdotes and personalities. It is necessary to take a strong interest in German literature and society, and in the fine arts generally, to care about a great deal of it; it is something like Coleridge's " Table Talk," which certainly few Germans would like or un- derstand, though the criticisms and opinions are full of interest for the English reader ; but it is yet more dramatic and lively in manner. When T was first in possession of this book, and referring with delight to some few senten- ces which caught my attention, a friend of mine, who had known Goethe well and long, wrote me, in her own peculiar style, some very charming things of its character and inten- tion ; the meaning, and as nearly as I can, the words, I must try to render into English. GOETHE AND EKERMANN. 231 ghtness, rtist-like love him i hardly >ns more ad ideas, BS. It is German fine arts al of it; lie Talk," 58 or un- opinions er ; but it ner. his book, w senten- riend of md long, le, some ad inten- can, the sh. " Ekermann's book," said she, " is the purest altar that has yet been erected to the fame of Goethe. In times like these, when the feeling of reverence (Pietat) seems to be fast departing, when a young author of talent takes up the pen, as a sort of critical dissecting-knife, mangling and prying where once he trembled and adored ; when his first endeavour is to fling down that heaviest burthen upon the soul of an egotist, — the burthen of admiration for the merits of another, is it not pleasant to meet with such a book as this ? And when everything one reads is so artificial, so gemacht, so impertinent, is it not delightful to open a book where in every page we feel the pulse-throb of a warm, true heart ? I do not know if I am right, but it seems to me that those who cannot admire, can have nothing in themselves to be admired ; then how worthy ot admiration must that man be, who thus throws down his whole heart and soul in admiration before the feet of another ! the simplicity of this entire abnegation of self lends to it a certain dignity. There is nothing here but truth and Ml ; > i 23-2 WINTER STUDIES. love — for Goethe loved Ekermann, and O ! how Ekermann loved Goethe ! "I can have no critical judgment here, and ought not to have ; I can only bear witness to the general truth of the whole, — nothing can be truer. I cannot be, like you, struck and charmed by particular passages. I was too long a sort of Lady High Treasurer to be dazzled or as- tonished now that the caskets are opened. I greet the gems as old acquaintance !" After this encouraging testimony, 1 go on with my notes and my translating. It appears that Schiller had the notion of a theatre where pieces should be given occasion- ally for men only, and Goethe seems to approve of this: I do not. The two sexes are more than sufficiently separated by different duties and pursuits ; what tends to separate them far- ther in their amusements cannot be good for either. A theatre for men only would soon be- come a bear-garden* t' < GOETHES TABLE TALK. 233 At an evening party, some of his own songs, to which Ekermann had composed beautiful music, were sung for him — he was much pleased. When all was over, he observed to Ekermann, that the songs out of the " Divan," * seemed to have no longer any connexion with himself: " both what is Orien- tal and what is impassioned in those songs," said he, " have passed away from me ; it is like the cast skin of a snake, which he leaves lying on his path ; but the little song * um Mitter- nacht ' f remains with me, a living part of my own life." After several pages on all manner of things, 1 find this remark on Schiller : " Through all his works,'" said Goethe, " we have the idea of freedom. And this idea changed its form as the genius and character of Schiller were progres- sively developed. In his early age it was phy- sical freedom, in his latter life the ideal ;" and afterwards he says finely, " that is not freedom • Written when he was more than seventy. t Written in his early youth. ii ^f^^ Si ! it' I' nH %'\' !i ( * i 234 WINTER STUDIES. where we acknowledge nothing above ourselves, but that is freedom, when we can reverence something greater than ourselves." He says of La Grange, ^^ he was a good man, and even through that, he was truly great ; for when a good human being is gifted with talents, he will work for the moral benefit of the world, whether he be artist, natural philosopher, poet, or whatever he may be." This is like what Weber wrote to Mendelsohn. Farther on he says, " All that is great and distinguished must be in the minority. There have been ministers who had both people and sovereign against them, and yet have accom- plished their own great plans ; it is not to be hoped that reason will ever be popular. Pas- sion, feeling, may be popular ; but reason will be the possession of the few." March 6. I have often thought and felt, that while in England we have political liberty, we have no- GOETHE 8 TABLE TALK. 235 thing like the personal and individual freedom, the social liberty of the Germans, even under their worst governments. The passage which follows has, therefore, struck me particularly. Goethe, in speaking with approbation of Guizot, quotes his remark, that " from the old Germans we deriv, the idea of personal freedom, which was especially characteristic of that people, and quite unknown in the ancient republics." " Is not this true ?" said Goethe. " Is he not per- fectly right? and is not the same idea prevalent among the Germans of our own time ? From this source sprung the Reformation, and not less the various complexion of our literature. The rontinual striving after originality in our poets, so that each thinks it necessary to make or find a new path for himself, the isolation* and eccentric habits of our learned men, where each will stand on his ground, and work his aim out of his individual mind, all come from the * Verisolirung. Isolirung is solitude and separation — what the French call isolement. Verisolirung ex- presses isolation with its injurious tendency. »^ i ' '. 1 if ]■ ':'if I :'i is .^' J'"' 236 WINTER STUDIES. same cause. The French and the English, on the contrary, hold more together, and the people all imitate one another. There is something uniform in their dress and behaviour; they are afraid to swerve from a given fashion, to make themselves peculiar or ridiculous. But in Ger- many every man follows his humour, without troubling himself about others; each man en- deavours to suffice to himself; for in each man, as Guizot has well observed, lives the idea of personal and individual freedom, from which proceeds much that is excellent, and also much that is absurd." This appears to me very true, and must, I think, strike every one who has been in Ger- many, and felt the interest which this kind of individuality imparts to society; though cer- tainly I have met with travellers who were not a little put out by it. Life, with them, having hitherto flowed on " comme une goutte d'huile sur une table de marbre," they know not how to understand the little projections and angles they have to encounter. The women appear affected, GOETHE S TABLE TALK. 237 and the men quizzical, precisely because the former are natural and the latter original, and all very unlike the ladies and gentlemen they have left behind, whose minds, like their bodies, are dressed in the same fashion. * « When in Germany, I was accustomed to hear Madame de Stael's " De rAlIemagne" men- tioned, if mentioned at all, with something worse than contempt, either as forgotten or out of date. Her trite information, her superficial cri- ticisms, her French prejudices, her feminine rashness, met with no quarter ; but think only, what changes of opinion, what revolutions in criticism, have taken place within thirty years ! Sir James Mackintosh — rich in all the lore of his age, beyond his age in most respects — writes, in 1807, (only two or three years before Madame de Stael produced her book,) of German litera- ture and criticism, as a sort of terra incognita^ as the navigators of the fifteenth century talked of a western continent, venturing, but with hesi- I.; il «i:i-; \ I 1 Y i ' ' I I i:: ! 11 238 WINTER STUDIES. tation, to commend Goethe, and seeming to think his ideas on art not quite despicable — " rather plausible and ingenious." He mentions the antipathy in France and England against German literature, and speaking of distin- guished modern writers, who might be con- sidered as likely to survive their own age, he says, ** I comprehend even Goethe and Schiller within the pale ; and though I know that fe\\ , either in France or England, agree with me, I have recourse to the usual consolation of singu- larity, that my opinion will be more prevalent when I am myself forgotten." Madame de Stael first made a breach through what Goethe himself called a ** Chinese wall of prejudices;" and we may pass through it surely without trampling upon her who had courage to open the way for us. The Germans understand us better than we understand them. To have a far stronger stamp of national character than most other people, yet better to comprehend and appre- ciate what lies in the national nature of other I ■ ir ' ! ' * 1' I GOETHE S TABLE TA' K. 239 people, is one of the most interesting charao teristics of the Germans. Their language lends itself with wondrous richness and flexibility to translation from ev» ry tongue, and their catholic taste embraces all literature, without insisting on any adaptation to their own canons of criti- cism or bienseance. All that Goethe says of art and artists is ad- mirable— worthy of him who was the greatest critic and connoisseur of his country and age; for in- stance, what he says of Claude Lorraine : " His pictures have the highest possible truth, and not a trace of reality ; he knew the real world in its minutest details, and used these details as a means to express the fairer world within his own soul; and that is the true ideal, where real means are so used that the apparent truth shall produce an illusion, as if it were reality." He calls architecture " eine erstarrte musiki'' an expression as untranslatable as it is exqui- sitely felicitous. And many other passages I leave unnoted with regret. Yet one thing I must not omit, for it has made me think much. II 1,1 i "f I. i • * i {hBIh i •jl'i 'ill 1 i { 1 ^ w Bil 'f.lll li'i 240 WINTER STUDIES. Goethe appears to consider our Saviour, with the twelve apostles, as presenting too much uni- formity to be a good subject for sculpture. The remark may possibly refer to the famous bronzes of Peter Vischer on the tomb of St. Sibald at Nuremburg. I was struck by the variety and discrimination exhibited in these figures; yet, on recollection, the variety was in the drapery and attitude — in the external, not internal cha- ter. It were easy to distinguish in sculpture two such opposite characters as St. John and St. Paul ; but how are we to distinguish St. An- drew and St. Simon, except by an external at- tribute, as that of giving St. Peter the keys, and St. Bartholomew his own skin over his arm, as at Milan? How make St. Thomas look incredulous ? So that, on the whole, there must be something characterless in such a group. Goethe says, that he had selected from the scriptures a cyclus of twelve figures as suited to sculpture, and presenting all together the history of our religion. SCULFl'URE. 241 iliU ;i i!!: 1. Adam, as the first man and father of man- kind— a type of human grandeur and perfection. He should have a spade, as the first cultivator of the earth; and to express his character of progenitor and parent, he should be accom- panied by a child, looking up to him with a bold confiding glance— a kind of boyish Hercules, crushing a snake in his hand; (perhaps with reference to the promise.) 2. Noah, the beginner of a new creation, as a vine-dresser, who, by the introduction of the grape, relieved the cares and made glad the heart of man. 3. Moses, as the first lawgiver. 4. After him, Isaiah, as prince and prophet. 5. Daniel, as the harbinger of the Messiah. 6. Christ, as Saviour and Redeemer. 7. John. 8. The Centurion of Capernaum, as repre- senting the believer, the Christian. 9. Next, the Mary Magdalene, as the sym- bol of humanity, reconciled to God through repentance. These two figures. Faith and VOL. I. M in. ! ■' li 1^ ['• ■ I ' '3 il I . : ! '"•rf::) '%' . 242 WINTER STUDIES. Repentance, representing the spirit of Chris- tianity. 10. Next, St. Paul, as promulgator of its doctrine. 11. Then St. James, as the first missionary, representing the diffusion of Christianity among strange lands. 12. Lastly, St. Peter, as keeper of the gate of salvation. He should have an inquiring, penetrating expression, as if demanding of those who presented themselves, whether they were worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. " What do you think of this my cyclus?" added Goethe ; " I think it would be richer in expression and contrast than the twelve apos- tles. The Moses and the Magdalene should be seated." He says that he composed the witch scene in the " Faust," in the Borghese Gardens at Rome. If ever I visit those gardens again, what a strange association will now mingle itself with those antique statues, and fountains, and clas- sical temples ! GOETHE S TABLE-TALK. 243 1: There is a great deal about his new theory of colours, which I read with interest, but dare not meddle with, because I do not quite understand all. This theory, it seems, is in- tended to supersede Newton's theory of light and colours : whether it will or not is another thing ; but as the savans in France have taken it up, I suppose it will be looked into by our own philosophers, and, meantime, whichever way the question may be decided hereafter, Goethe's own feeling on the subject will be referred to with interest, either as a curious instance of self-delusion, or a sublime antici- pation of future glory. " On what I have done as a poet," said he, " I would not presume much — I do not pique myself on it"— (hear this !) — " excellent poets have lived as my contemporaries — more excellent before me — and others will live after me ; but that, in my own age, I am the only one who, in the profound science of colours, has obtained a knowledge of the iruth — in that I do give my- M 2 Pi ^^1^ If!' 244 WINTER STUDIES. self some credit — in that only I have a conscious- ness of superiority over many." This is something like the grand, calm, self- exultation of Milton. Is it as weP founded ? — Methinks I should like to know. He speaks in various places of the unseen, imperceptible influences of all outward things in forming the genius and character. " Surely," he says, " the man who has passed all his life long beneath the lofty serious oak, will be a very different man from him who has lived be- neath the shade of the myrtle and the willow." He says, feelingly, " It is not good /or man to he alone, and, above all, i; is not good for man to work alone ; he requires sympathy, en- couragement, excitement, to succeed in any- thing good : in this way I ma] thank Schiller for some of my best ballads ; and you may take the credit to yourself," he adds kindly to Ekermann, " if ever I finish the second part of Faust."" There is a great deal all through the second GOETHE S TABLE-TALK. 245 ilk f| 11 « y. I conscious- volume relating to the second part of the Faust, which occupied Goethe during the last years of his life, and which he finished at the age of eighty-two. On completing it he says, " Now I may consider the remainder of my existence as a free gift, and it i-i indifferent whether I do anything more or no*; ;" as if he had considered his whole former life as held conditionally, bind- ing him to execute certain objects to which he believed himself called. He survived the com- pletion of the Faust only one year. The purport of the second part of Faust has puzzled many German and English scholars, and in Germany there are already treatises and commentaries on it, as on the Divina Corn- media. I never read it, and, if I had, would not certainly venture an opinion " where doctors disagree;" but I recollect that Von Hammer once gave me, in his clear animated manner, a comprehensive analysis of this wonderful pro- duction— that is, according to his own interpre- tation of it. " I regard it," said he, " as being from beginning to end a grand poetical piece of Si ■■ ' - r- l;1 f I I k 'I \ 1 ■ 246 WINTER STUDIES. ? 11 . ' -■ irony on the whole universe, which is turned, as it were, wrong side out. In this point of view I understand it; in any other point of view it appears to me incomprehensible. It contains some of the most splendid passages he hai3 written." Everywhere Goethe speaks of Sir Walter Scott with the utmost enthusiasm of admiration, as the greatest writer of his time ; he speaks of him as being without his like, as without his equal. I remember Goethe's daughter-in-law saying to me playfully, " When my father got hold of one of Scott's romances, there was no speaking to him till he had finished the third volume : he was worse than any girl at a boarding-school with her first novel !" I have particular pleasure in noting this, be- cause I have seen in several English papers and reviews a passage from some book of travels in which Goethe, on what authority I know not, is represented as holding Sir Walter Scott in the utmost contempt. This is altogether false ; yet Goethe's table-talk. 247 J V 1 " 't K, t. '^ '1 t ,' " V the same passage I have lately seen translated into American papers, and thence into the papers of Upper and Lower Canada. Thus over the whole reading world is the belief diffused, that one great genius could either be wretchedly mistaken or enviously unjust i.i estimating another great genius — a belief as dishonourable to genius and human nature, as it is conso- latory to the common cry of curs, to i^orant mediocrity, " for folly loves the martyrdom of fame." I held in my own hands — read with mine own eyes — a long letter addressed by Sir Walter to Goethe, giving an account of his own family, his pursuits, &c., as friend to friend, and expressive of the utmost reverence, as well as gratitude for marks of kindness and approbation received from Goethe. " A lie," says the Chinese proverb, " has no feet, it cannot stand;' but it has wings and can fly fast and far enough. I only wish that truth may be able to follow it, and undo the mischief thus done — through some uninten- tt .|!1 1, ! II V ) i : ? ! Ml i ill j, 11 1 i i _ H In Mil 248 WINTER STUDIES. tional mistake perhaps, —but not the less miS' chief and injustice. The following beautiful and original inter- pretation of Goethe'*s ballad of the " Erl-King" is not in Ekermann''s book ; but never mind, I give it to you in the words in which it was given to me. " Goethe's * Erl-Konig* is a moral allegory of deep meaning, though I am not sure he meant it as such, or intended all that it sig* nifies. ** There are beings in the world who see, who feel, with a finer sense than that granted to other mortals. ITiey see the spiritual, the imaginative sorrow, or danger, or terror which threatens them ; and those who see not with the same eyes, talk reason and philosophy to them. The poor frightened child cries out for aid, for mercy; and Papa Wisdom — worldly wisdom — answers, GOETHE S TABLE-TALK. 249 " * Meiii Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstrief T « Or, " * Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau !' " It is only the vapour-wreath, or the grey willows waving, and tells him to be quiet ! At last the poor child of feeling is found dead in the arms of Wisdom, from causes which no one else perceived — or believed ! Is it not often so?'' ■'i I'l What Goethe says of false and true tenden- cies of mind, and the mistaking a tendency for a talent, deserves attention ; it is a mistake we often fall into, both with regard to ourselves and others. He says, smiling, " People think that a man must needs grow old, in order to be wise ; the truth is, that as years increase upon us, we have enough to do to be as good and as wise as we have been. * * In certain things a man is as likely to be in the right at twenty as at sixty." M 5 (•iJ I i»:!i;i ii'i 1 e m » I mtSi It- Ml ■ 1 ll' &i,. L 1 1 Mb HI' i§ j;j' H; n < ^HH H' Mm '" 11 i If j ^ •] W' i Wi' ' ) \ f i M ■ m 1: 1 'i * i Hi i ^it 1 ^kI 1 p ■H B !l 1 Hi ^ Jii 1 1 i8 1 H! ]i 1 i Ri 1 i ' If ■ h H 1 ' ' 11'' 'If III ly^M i: III 250 WINTER STUDIES. On this point there is much more, to which I subscribe heartily. On the subject of religion I find this beau- tiful comparison, but am not sure whether it be Ekermann's or Goethe's. " A connoisseur standing before the picture of a great master will regard it as a whole. He knows how to combine instantly the scattered parts into the general effect; the universal, as well as the individual, is to him animated. He has no preference for certain portions: he does not ask why this or that face is beautiful or other- wise ; why this part is light, that dark ; only he requires that all shall be in the right place, and according to the just rules of art ; but place an ignorant person before such a picture, and you will see that the great design of the whole will either be overlooked by him, or confuse him utterly. Some small portion will attract him, another will offend him, and in the end he will dwell upon some trifling object which is familiar to him, and praise this helmet, or that feather, as being well executed." Goethe's table-talk. 251 " We men, before the great picture of the des- tinies of the universe, play the part of such dunces, such novices in art. Here we are at- tracted by a bright spot, a graceful configura- tion ; there we are repelled by a deep shadow, a painful object ; the immense whole bewilders and perplexes us ; we seek in vain to penetrate the leading idea of that great Being, who de- signed the whole upon a plan which our limited human intellect cannot comprehend." When Goethe was more than eighty, he pur- chased, for the first tiwe, an easy chair. His indifference, and even contempt for the most ordinary comforts and luxuries of this kind, were amusing. The furniture of his study and bed- room (still preserved as he left them) is of the most homely description. A common deal table, a wooden desk, and a high stool, the very sight of which gave me a pain in my back, were the only conveniences. He used to say, that never being accustomed from his youth to iti) ' TiM k .h i I '' 'i, 252 WINTER STUDIES. I .k luxuries and fine furniture, they took his atten- tion from his work. But his drawing-room was elegant — I remember two very large frames, in which he was accustomed to dispose a variety of original drawings by the old masters, perhaps eight or ten in each. When they had hung some time, he changed them for another set. These were his luxuries : the set of drawings which he last selected, remain hanging in the room. The anecdote related by Ekermann of the Roman cobbler, who used an antique head of one of the Caesars as a block to hammer his leather on, reminds me that the head of the Ilioneus was put to a similar use by a cobbler at Prague. The most extraordinary thing in this book is what Goethe calls " Das Damonische." I have (I believe) a kind of glimmering of what he means: whatever exercises a power, a fasci- nation over the mind, whatever in intellect or nature is inexplicable, whatever seems to have a spiritual existence apart from all GOETHE S TABLE-TALK. 253 his book is understood or received laws, acknowledged as irresistible, yet mocking all reason to ex- plain it — a kind of intellectual electricity or mag- netism— in short, whatever is unaccountable — he classes under the general head of " Das Ddmo- nische ;" a very convenient way, and truly a very poetical way, of getting rid of what one does not comprehend. It is, he says, as if " the curtain was drawn away from the background of exis- tence." In things, he instances as examples of this D'amonische, music in itself and in its effect on the mind ; poetry of the highest order ; and in characters he instances Shakspeare, Napo- leon, Byron, the late Grand Duke, (his friend, Karl August,) and others. But it is dangerous almost to go on playing thus with his and one's own deepest, wildest thoughts — and I cannot follow them. There are passages scattered up and down the book, which clearly prove that Goethe never considered himself as one called upon to take a part in the revolutions and political struggles of his time ; but because he stood calmly on the b ! I wm: ,f 254 WINTER STUDIES. " shore of peace with unwet eye," and let the giddy torrent whirl past him, shall we infer that he took no heed of its course ? Can we think that this great and gifted being, whose ample ken embraced a universe, had neither sympa- thies in the grandest interests, nor hopes in the brightest destinies, of humanity? It were a profanation to think thus : ■> s '■^ '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 2CG WINTER STUDIES. II ; , ,, 1 M ' ; ^X W ■ t^BI ■ |iiif pj' ¥ rose. It shifted its form and hue at every mo- ment, flashing and waving like a banner in the breeze ; and through this portentous veil, trans- parent as light itself, the stars shone out with a calm and steady brightness ; and I thought, as I looked upon them, of a character we both know, where, like those fair stars, the intellec- tual powers shine serenely bright through a veil of passions, fancies, and caprices. It is most awfully beautiful ! I have been standing at my window watching its evolutions, till it is no longer night, but morning. April 1. So, there is another month gone ; and the snows are just beginning to disappear, and the flocks of snow-birds with them ; and the ice is breaking up at the entrance of the bay, and one or two little vessels have ventured as far as the King's Wharf ; and the wind blows strong to dry up the melting snow, and some time or other, perhaps, spring will come, and this long winter's TOIIONTO. 207 every mo- iner in the ireil, trans- out with a hought, as !r we both e intellec- mgh a veil It is most iing at my [1 it is no April 1. s ; and the air, and the i the ice is ly, and one s far as the s strong to me or other, mg winter's imprisonment will be at an end. Yes ; I have been spoiled during these last years— 1 have been existing only for, and by, the highest fa- culties of my being — have lived through admira- tion, hope, and love, " until aversion and con- tempt were things I only knew by name ;" and now another time is come — how ill, how very ill I bear it ! This is the worst season in Canada. The roads are breaking up, and nearly impassable ; lands are flooded, and in low situations there is much sickness, particularly ague. We have still sixteen square miles of ice within the bay. The market at Toronto is not well supplied, and is at a great distance from us. The higher class of people are supplied with provisions from their own lands and farms, or by certain persons they know and employ. With a little manage- ment and forethought, we now get on very well ; but at first we had to suffer great inconvenience. Quantities of salted provisions are still imported into the country for the consumption of the N 2 !^ ii!' i' ,9 ■J I \ "IP' i#tllii! 268 WINTER STUDIES. soldiers and distant settlers, and at certain seasons — at present, for example — there is some difficulty in procuring anything else. Our table, however, is pretty well supplied. Beef is tolerable, but lean ; mutton bad, scarce, and dearer than beef; pork excellent and deli- cate, being fattened principally on Indian corn. The fish is of many various kinds, and delicious. During the whole winter we had black-bass and white-fish, caught in holes in the ice, and brought down by the Indians. Venison, game, and wild fowl are always to be had ; the quails, which are caught in immense numbers near Toronto, are most delicate eating ; I lived on them when I could eat nothing else. What they call partridge here is a small species of pheasant, also very good ; and now we are pro- mised snipes and woodcocks in abundance. The wild goose is also excellent eating when well cooked, but the old proverb about Heaven send- ing meat, &c. &c. is verified here. Those who have farms near the city, or a country esta- blishment of their own, raise poultry and vege- TORONTO. '269 '.J I tables for their own table. As yet I have seen no vegetables whatever but potatoes ; even in the best seasons they are not readily to be procured in the market. Every year, however, as To- ronto increases in population and importance, will diminish these minor inconveniences. The want of good servants is a more serious evil. I could amuse you with an account of the petty miseries we have been enduring from this cause, the strange characters who come to offer themselves, and the wages required. Almost all the servants are of the lower class of Irish emigrants, in general honest, warm- hearted, and willing ; but never having seen anything but want, dirt, and reckless misery at home, they are not the most eligible persons to trust with the cleanliness and comfort of one's household. Yet we make as many complaints, and express as much surprise at their deficien- cies, as though it were possible it could be otherwise. We give to our man-servant eight dollars a month, to the cook six dollars, and to the housemaid four ; but these are lower wages it m m-^ ^^ m ' I i II' W' ri; ■1 , ■ t 11 f II Mi \ I 270 WINTER STUDIES. than are usual for good and experienced ser- vants, who might indeed command almost any wages here, where all labour is high priced. A carriage of some kind is here one of the necessaries of life, but a light English-built carriage would be quite unfit for the country — absolutely useless. There is, however, an ex- cellent coachmaker here, who has turned out some very pretty equipages — both sleighs and barouches — of the build which is calculated for the roads in the neighbourhood. There are other good shops in the town, and one, that of the apothecary, worthy of Regent- street in its appearance. The importations oi china, glass, hardware, and clothing, arrive from England in the spring and autumn, the seasons for making our purchases. All these articles are much dearer than in England, and there is little choice as to taste or fashion. Two years ago we bought our books at the same shop where we bought our shoes, our spades, our sugar, and salt pork ; now we have two good booksellers* shops, and at one of these a circu- NEWSPAPEHS. 271 ienced ser- almost any priced, one of the [iglish-built ! country — er, an ex- turned out sleighs and culated for I town, and of Regent- ortations ot arrive from the seasons ese articles ind there is Two years same shop ipades, our I two good ese a circu- lating library of two or three hundred volumes of common novels. As soon as there is a de- mand for something better, there will be a supply of course; but, as I said before, we must have time. Archdeacon Strahan and Chief Justice Robinson have very pretty libra- ries, but in general it is about two years before a new work of any importance finds its way here ; the American reprints of the English re- views and magazines, and the Albion newspaper, seem to supply amply our literary wants. Apropos to newspapers — my table is covered with them. In the absence or scarcity of books, they are the principal medium of knowledge and communication in Upper Canada. There is no stamp-act here— no duty on paper; and I have sometimes thought that the great number of local newspapers which do not circulate beyond their own little town or district, must, from the vulgar, narrow tone of many of them, do mis- chief ; but on the whole, perhaps, they do more good. Paragraphs printed from English or American papers, on subjects of general in- 1^ I. I i \ )| I V ill I: .r / 1 1 t 1 ♦ 1 , ,1 -t ill 27-2 WINTER STUDIES. tt'iest, tlie summary of political events, extracts from books or magazines, are copied from one paper into another, till they have travelled round the country. It is true that a great deal of base, vulgar, inflammatory party feeling is also circu- lated by the same means ; but, on the whole, I should not like to see the number or circulation of the district papers checked. There are about forty published in Upper Canada; of these, three are religious, viz. the " Christian Guardian," " The Wesleyan Advocate," and " The Church f a paper in the German lan- guage is published at Berhn, in the Gore district, for the use of the German settlers; " The Correspondent and Advocate " is the leading Radical, " The Toronto Patriot " the leading Conservative paper. The news- papers of Lower Canada and the United States are circulated in great numbers; and as they pay postage, it is no inconsiderable item in the revenue of the post-office. In some of these provincial papers I have seen articles written with considerable talent ; among other things, I I i I s, extracts from one lied round al of base, also circu- e whole, I irculation riiere are anada ; of Christian ate," and rman lan- the Gore 1 settlers; 3" is the Patriot " 'he news- ted States i as they em in the of these 5s written ' things, I CHURCHES. •273 have remarked a series of letters signed Evans, addressed to the Canadians, on the subject of an education fitted for an agricultural people, and written with infinite good sense and kindly feeling ; these have been copied from one paper into another, and circulated widely : no doubt they will do good. Last year the number of newspapers circulated through the post-office, and paying postage, was. Provincial papers .... 178,065 United States and foreign papers . Ii9,50'2 Add 100,000 papers stamped or free, here are 427,567 papers circulated yearly among a popu- lation of 370,000, of whom, perhaps, one in fifty can read ; — this is pretty well. The gross receipts of the post-office are 21,000/. a year. It is rather affecting to see the long lists of un- claimed letters lying at the post-office, and read the advertisements in the Canada and American journals for husbands, relatives, friends, lost or strayed. There is a commercial news-room in the city N 5 )■ m^ f 1 1, '::i t I 'k ii *• ' I, 1 '' 'tk Iri^i" ' j ' 1 • I 274 WINTLR STUDIES. of Toronto, and this is absolutely the only place of assembly or amusement, except the taverns and low drinking-houses. An attempt has been made to found a mechanics' institute and a lite- rary club ; but as yet they create little interest, and are very ill supported. If the sympathy for literature and science be small, that for music is less. Owing to the exertions of an intelligent musician here, some voices have been so far drilled that the psalms and anthems at church are very tolerably per- formed; but this gentleman receives so little general encouragement, that he is at this mo- ment preparing to go over to the United States. The archdeacon is collecting subscriptions to pay for an organ which is to cost a thousand pounds ; if the money were expended in aid of a singing-school, it would do more good. The interior of the episcopal church here is rather elegant, with the exception of a huge window of painted glass which cost 500/., and is in a vile, tawdry taste. Besides the episcopal church, the Presbyte- u,. TOllONTO. •275 riuns, Methodists, Roman Catholics, and Uaptisls have each a place of worship. Tiiere is also an African church for the negroes. The hospital, a largo brick building, is yet too small for the increasing size of the city. The jiublic grammar-school, called the " Upper Canada College," forms a cluster of ugly brick i)uildings; and although the system of educa- tion there appears narrow and defective, yet it is a heginnintjy and certainly productive of good. The physician I have mentioned to you, Dr. Rees, entertains the idea of founding a house ot reception for destitute female emigrants on their arrival in Canada — a house where, without de- pending on charity^ they may be boarded and lodged at the smallest possible cost, and re- spectably protected till they can procure em- ployment. You may easily imagine that 1 take a deep interest in this design. There you have the result of a walk 1 took this morning up and down our city with a very intelligent guide. il it !l H t. I •* ■ > •270 WINTEIl 8TU0ILS. I am afraid these trifling facts will not much interest you. For me, no facts, merely as facts, are in the slightest degree interesting, except as they lead to some truth. I must combine them, and in the combination seek or find a re- sult, before such facts excite either my curiosity or attention. t '1 April 1J>. Tlie ice in the Bay of Toronto has been, during the winter months, from four to five feet in thickness: within the last few days it has been cracking in every direction with strange noises, and last night, during a tremendous gale from the east, it was rent, and loosened, and driven at once out of the bay. " It moveth altogether, if it move at all.'* The last time I drove across the bay, the ice beneath me ap- peared as fixed and firm as the foundations of the earth, and within twelve hours it has disap- peared. l!' . not much ^ as tacts, g, except combine find a re- curiosity DEIACHEI) THOUOHTS. *277 To-day the first steam-boat of the season en- tered our harbour. They called me to the window to see it, as, with flags and streamers flying, and amid the cheers of the people, it swept majestically into the bay. I sympathised with the general rejoicing, for I can fully understand all the animation and bus^b which the opening of the navigation will bring to our torpid capital. \pril la. :ms been, ► five feet ^s it has 1 strange >mendous loosened, t moveth 3t time I 1 me ap- ations of as disap- In former times, when people travelled into strange countries, they travelled de bonne foi, really to see and learn what was new to them. Now, when a traveller goes to a foreign country, it is always with a set of preconceived notions concerning it, to which he fits all he sees, and refers all he hears ; and this, I suppose, is the reason that the old travellers are still safe guides ; while modern travellers may be pleasant reading, but are withal the most unsafe guides any one can have. !l I ■ w ms ! I 'I ' I ! 1 «, : ! ■; f .ii ■'•'I ■ 7j. ;» a 278 WINTER STUDIES. I am inclined to distrust the judgment of those persons whom I see occupied by one sub- ject, one idea, one object, and referring all things to that, till it assumes by degrees an undue magnitude and importance, and prevents them from feeling the true relative proportion and value of other objects : yet thus it is, per- haps, that single truths are worked out and per- fected. Yet, again, I doubt whether there be separate and single truths — whether it be possi- ble for one to arrive at the truth by any narrow path ; — or is truth, like heaven, " a palace with many doors," to which we arrive by many paths, each thinking his own the right one ; and it is not till we have arrived within the sanctuary that we perceive we are in a central point to which converge a thousand various paths from every point of the compass— every region of thought ? In the Pitti Palace at Florence there is a statue, standing alone in its naked beauty, in the centre of a many-sided saloon, panelled with mirrors, in which it is reflected at once in li ■ :::^ DETACH'^.D THOUGHTS. 279 every different aspect, and in each, though dif- ferently, yet truly, as long as the mirror be clear and unwarped — and such is truth. We all look towards it, but each mind beholds it under a different angle of incidence ; and unless we were so freed from all eai-thly bonds as to behold in one and the same moment the statue itself, in its pure unvarying oneness, and all its multi- plied and ever-varying reflections imaged around, how shall we presume to settle which of these is the false, and which the true ? To reason from analogy is often dangerous, but to illustrate by a fanciful analogy is some- times a means by which we light an idea, as it ere, into the understanding of another. t '\ If' at once m April a4. The King of Prussia, after seeing Othello, for- bade Desdemona to be murdered for the future, and the catastrophe was altered accordingly — " by his majesty's command." This good-na- tured monarch, whose ideas of art are quite sin- It 0^ 1 ' f 1 f ■1 ,. 1 ^ '!' •I i .1 I. ■ ! i h i 1 J 1 280 WINTER STUDIES. gular, also insisted that in the opera of Undine, Huldibrand should not die as in the tale, but be • come a water-spirit, and "all end happily;*' but I would not advise you to laugh at this, as long as we endure the new catastrophes tacked to Shakspeare. It was Hoffmann, so celebrated for his tales of diablerie, and in Germany not less celebrated as a musician, who composed the opera of Undine. The music, as I have been assured, was delicious, and received at Berlin with rapturous approval. After the first few representations, the opera-house was burnt down, and with it the score of the Undine perished. Hoffmann had accidentally one parfie in his desk, but in the excess of his rage and despair he threw that also into the fire, and thus not a note of this charming opera survives. Only the other day I was reading Hoffmann's analysis and exposition of the Don Juan. It is certainly one of the wildest, and yet one of the most beautiful, pieces of criticism I ever met with — the criticism of an inspired poet and HOFFMANN. 281 musician. Methiuks that in this opera the words and the music are as body and soul ; and certainly we must judge the character and signi- fication of the whole by the music, not by the words. Hoifmann regards Don Juan as a kind of Faust, and insists that Donna Anna was in love with him ; and the music given to her ex- presses certainly a depth of passion and despair beyond the words, and something different from them. The text speaks the conventional wo- man, and the music breathes the voice of nature revealing the struggle, the tempest within. When at New York this winter, I was intro- duced to a fine old Italian, with long and flow- ing white hair, and a most venerable and marked physiognomy ; it was Lorenzo da Porta, the man who had first introduced Mozart to the Emperor Joseph, and who wrote for him the text of the Don Juan, the Figaro, and the Cosi fan Tutti : we have no such libretti now ! The German text of the Zauberfldte was by Schichenada, a buffoon comedian and singer n\ ■■ ■ i \:<\ i ! - f i I j. ■ 282 WlNTEIl STUDIES. in the service of Joseph II.; he was himself the original Papageno. Some people think that he meant to dramatise in this opera the mysteries of Freemasonry, and others are anxious to find in it some profound allegorical meaning; whereas I doubt whether the text has any meaning at all, while to the delicious music we may ally a thousand meanings, a thou- sand fairy-dreams of poetry. Schichenada was patronised by Joseph, and much attached to him ; after the emperor's death, he went mad, and spent the rest of his life sitting in an arm- chair, with a large sheet thrown all over him, refusing to speak to his family. When any one visited him, he would lift the sheet from his head, and ask, with a fixed look, " Did you know Joseph ?" If the answer were ** K < !o .1 ti.ii ,11 ) ) 1 ^I'l i ' ' ^ ■ ' iK', ; ' 4^i lifi ! f ' • ' , 286 WlNTEIi STUDIES. :: f' i« ■ ■ . 1 : ,1 «' 1 i^l!'- seemed to me essentially lyric, rather than dramatic : in his admirable tragedies the charac- ter, the sentiment, are always more artistically evolved than the situation or action. The characters of Sappho and Medea, in his two finest dramas,* are splendid creations. We have not, I think, in the drama of the pre- sent day, anything conceived with equal power, and at the same time carried out in every part, and set forth with such glorious poetical colour- ing. Lord Byron's " Sardanapalus" would give perhaps a more just idea of the manner in which Grillparzer treats a dramatic subject, than any- thing else in our literature to which I could compare him. * The " Sappho" appeared after the " Ahnfrau/' to which it presents a remarkable contrast in style and construction. The "Golden Fleece," in three parts, ap- peared in 1822. Both these tragea.'es have been repre- sented on all the theatres in Germany ; and Madame Wolff at Berlin, Madame Heygendorf at Weimar, Madame Schroeder at Munich and Vienna, have all excelled as Sappho and Medea. GRILLPARZER. 287 9 cher than le charac- rtistieally lea, in his creations. )f the pre- ual power, 3very part, ical colour- would give ,er in which , than any- ch I could Ahnfrau," to ; in style and ree parts, ap- e been repre- and Madame at Weimar, nna, have all Sappho is the type of the woman of genius. She enters crowned with the Olympic laurel, surrounded by the shouts of gratulating crowds, and shrinks within herself to find that they bring her incense, not happiness — applause, not sympathy — fame, not love. She would fain renew her youth, the golden dreams of her morning of life, before she had sounded the depths of grief and passion, before experience had thrown its shadow over her heart, in the love of the youthful, inexperienced, joyous Phaon ; and it is well imagined too, that while we are filled with deepest admiration and com- passion for Sappho, betrayed and raging like a Pythoness, we yet have sympathy for the boy Phaon, who leaves the love of his magnificent mistress — love rather bestowed than yielded — for that of the fair, gentle slave Melitta. His first love is the woman to whom he does homage ; his second, the woman to whom he gives pro- tection. Nothing can be more natural; it is the common course of things. Learned and unlearned agree in admiring i ' "•i \ i 288 WINTER STUDIES. • i Grillparzer's versification of Sappho's celebrated ode — " Golden-Thronende Aphrodite !" — It sounds to my unlearned ears wonderfully- grand and Greek, and musical and classical: and when Schroeder recites these lines in the theatre, you might hear your own heart beat in the breathless silence around.* German critics consider the " Medea" less perfect than the " Sappho" in point of style, and, considered merely as a work of art, infe- rior. Of this I cannot so well judge, but I shall never forget reading it for the first time— I think of it as an era in my poetic reminiscences. It is the only conception of the character in which we understand the necessity for Medea's murder of her children. In the other tragedies * The translation of the same ode by Ambrose Phillips, " O Venus ! beauty of the skies. To whom a thousand temples rise," is well known. In spite of the commendation be- stowed on it by Addison, it appears very trivial and affected, compared with that of Grillparzer. GRILLPAUZER. 289 I elebrated )ndorfully classical : les in the irt beat in edea" less of style, art, infe- 3ut I shall t time —I iniscences. laracter in or Medea's r tragedies ly Ambrose endation be- r trivial and on the same subject, we must take it for granted; but Grillparzer conducts us to the appalHng catastrophe through such a linked chain of motives and feelings, that when it comes, it comes as something inevitable. Medea is the type of the woman of instinct and passion. Contrasted with the elegant, sub- dued Greek females, she is a half savage, all devotion and obedience one moment, a tame- less tigress in the next ; first subdued by the masculine valour, then revolted by the moral cowardice of Jason. Grillparzer has wisely kept the virago and the sorceress, with whom we hardly sympathise, out of sight as much as pos- sible; while the human being, humanly acted upon and humanly acting and feeling, is for ever before us. There is a dreadful truth and nature in the whole portrait, which is perfectly finished throughout. Placed beside the Medea of Euri- pides, it is the picturesque compared with the statuesque dehneation. The subject of the " Medea" has a strange fascination around it, like that of the terrible VOL. I. o li i I II m P & '290 WINTER STUDIES. i ! i I t 'ii agonised beauty of the " Medusa," on which we must gaze though it turn us to stone. It has been treated in every possible style, in I know not how many tragedies and operas, ancient and modern. I remember, at Vienna, a represen- tation of a singular kind given by Madame Schroeder ; it was a monologue in prose, with musical symphonies, composed by George Benda, about 1755. After every two or three spoken sentences came a strain of music, which the actress accompanied by expressive panto- mime. The prose text (by Gotter) appeared to me a string of adjurations, exclamations, and imprecations, without any colouring of poetry; and the music interrupted rather than aided the flow of the passion. Still it was a most striking exhibition of Schroeder's peculiar talent; her fine classical attitudes were a study for an artist, and there were bursts of pathos, and flashes of inconceivable majesty, which thrilled me. The fierceness was better expressed than the tenderness of the woman, and the adjura- tion to Hecate recalled for a moment Mrs. LAKE ONTARIO. 291 Siddoiis's voice and look when she read the witch-scene in « Machetli ;" yet, take her alto- gether, she was not so fine as Pasta in the same character. Schroeder's Lady Macbeth I re- member thinking insufferable. May 19. After some days of rather severe indisposition from ague and fever, able to sit up. Sat at the window drawing, or rather not drawing, but with a pencil in my hand. This beautiful Lake Ontario ! — my lake — for I begin to be in love with it, and look on it as mine ! — ^ it changed its hues every moment, the shades of purple and green fleeting over it, now dark, now lustrous, now pale — like a dolphin dying ; or, to use a more exact though less poetical comparison, dappled, and varying like the back of a mackarel, with every now and then a streak of silver light dividing the shades of green : mag- nificent, tumultuous clouds came rolling round the horizon ; and the little graceful schooners, o 2 ill' 11 Iff^ , 1 I' 1 'j.i . 1 ^'^1 fi H 1 i i I I « 1 1'Muii- 292 WINTER STUDIES. falling into every beautiful attitude, and catching every variety of light and shade, came curtsey- ing into the bay : and flights of wild geese, and great black loons, were skimming, diving, sporting over the bosom of the lake ; and beau- tiful little unknown birds, in gorgeous plumage of crimson and black, were fluttering about the garden : all life, and light, and beauty were abroad — the resurrection of Nature ! How beautiful it was ! how dearly welcome to my senses — to my heart — this spring which comes at last — so long wished for, so long waited for ! May 30. Last night, a ball at the government-house, to which people came from a distance of fifty — a hundred — two hundred miles — which is no- thing to signify here. There were very pretty girls, and very nice dancing ; but we had all too much reason to lament the loss of the band of the 66th regiment, which left us a few weeks ago — to my sorrow. It is to be hoped that all the governors sent THE CREDIT. 293 J t\ :^i * 'i n here for the future may be married men, and bring their wives with them, for the presence of a female at the head of our little provincial court — particularly if she be intelligent, good- natured, and accomphshed — is a greater ad- vantage to the society here, and does more to render the] government popular, than you can well imagine. U'r i\ tremors sent Erindale. — A very pretty place, with a very pretty name. A kind invitation led me hither, to seek change of air, change of scene, and every , . Other change I most needed. The Britannia steam-boat, which plies daily between Toronto and Hamilton, brought us to the mouth of the Credit River in an hour and a half. By the orders of Mr. M * * *, a spring cart or wagon, the usual vehicle of the country, was waiting by the inn, on the shore of the lake, to convey me through the woods to his house ; and the master of the inn, a decent, respectable vi> "> s 1" \i' - '^f ■ fi! ■«l P'^ H I.: -.in 294 WINTER STUDIES. man, drove the wagon. He had left England a mere child, thirty years ago, with his father, mother, and seven . brothers and sisters, and eighteen years ago had come to Canada from the United States, at the suggestion of a relation, to settle " in the bush," the common term for uncleared land ; at that time they had nothing, as he said, but " health and hands." The fa- mily, now reduced to five, are all doing well. He has himself a farm of two hundred and fifty acres, his own property; his brother as much more ; his sisters are well settled. " Any man," said he, " with health and a pair of hands, could get on well in this country, if it were not for the drink ; that ruins hundreds." They are forming a harbour at the mouth of the river — widening and deepening the channel ; but, owing to the want of means and money during the present perplexities, the works are m not going on. There is a clean, tidy inn, and some log and frame houses ; the situation is .■ ] 1; • low, swampy, and I should suppose unhealthy ; but they assured me, that though still subject WBMMi HHei, • :i THE CREDIT. 295 \l '"I HI (ft England his father, Lsters, and da from the a relation, n term for ad nothing, ' The fa- doing well, ed and fifty 3r as much Any man," lands, could ere not for e mouth of lie channel ; and money ( works are iy inn, and situation is unhealthy ; ;till subject to ague and fever in the spring, every year diminished this inconvenience, as the draining and clearing of the lands around was proceeding rapidly. The River Credit is so called, because in ancient times (i. e. forty or fifty years ago) the fur traders met the Indians on its banks, and delivered to them on credit the goods for which, the following year, tuey received the value, or rather ten times the value, in skins. In a country where there is no law of debtor or cre- i.'.tor, no bonds, stamps, bills, or bailiffs, no possibility of punishing, or even catching a re- fractory or fraudulent debtor, but, on the con- trary, every possibility of being tomahawked by ! i said debtor, this might seem a hazardous arrangement ; yet I have been assured by those long engaged in the trade, both in the upper and lower province, that for an Indian to break his engagements is a thing unheard of : and if, by any personal accident, he should be pre- vented from bringing in the stipulated number of beaver skins, his relatives and friends con- 14 If 1 1 ill i i . '.'In n- ii i j-^' \ \r I :i %llt- 296 WINTER STUDIES. sider their honour implicated, and make up the quantity for him. The fur trade has long ceased upon t'aese shores, once the scene of bloody conflicts be- tween the Hurons and the Missassaguas. The latter were at length nearly extirpated; a wretched, degenerate remnant of the tribe still continued to skulk about their old haunts and the burial-place of their fathers, which is a high mound on the west bank of the river, and close upon the lake. These were collected by the Methodist missionaries, into a village or settle- ment, about two miles farther on, where an attempt has been made to civilise and convert them. The government have expended a large sum in aid of this charitable purpose, and about fifty log-huts have been constructed for the Indians, each hut being divided by a partition, and capable of lodging two or more families. There is also a chapel and a school-house. Peter Jones, otherwise Kahkewaquonaby, a half-cast Indian, is the second chief and reli- gious teacher ; he was in England a few years THE CREDIT. 297 ago to raise contributions for his people, and married a young enthusiastic Enghshwoman with a small property. She has recently quitted the village to return to Europe. There is, be- sides, a regular Methodist preacher established here, who cannot speak one word of the lan- guage of the natives, nor hold any communion with them, except through an interpreter. He complained of the mortality among the chil- dren, and the yearly diminution of numbers in the settlement. The greater number of those who remain are half-breeds, and of these, some of the young women and children are really splendid creatures ; but the general appearance of the place and people struck me as gloomy. The Indians, whom I saw wandering and lounging about, and the squaws wrapped in dirty blankets, with their long black hair falling over their faces and eyes, filled me with compassion. When the tribe were first gathered together, they amounted to seven hundred men, women, and children ; there are now about two hundred and twenty. The missionary and his wife ■|vi ) )i o o 298 WINTER STUDIES. looked dejected; he told me that the Con- ference never allowed them (the missionaries) to remain with any congregation long enough to know the people, or take a personal interest in their welfare. In general the term of their residence in any settlement or district was from two to three years, and they were then ex- changed for another. Among the inhabitants a few have cultivated the portion of land allotted to them, and live in comparative comfort ; three or four women (half cast) are favourably distin- guished by the cleanliness of their houses, and general good conduct ; and some of the children are remarkably intelligent, and can read both their own language and Enghsh ; but these are exceptions, and dirt, indolence, and drunken- ness, are but too general. Consumption is the prevalent disease, and carries off numbers* of these wretched people. After passing the Indian village, we plunged * The notes thrown together here are the result of three different visits to the Credit, and information otherwise obtained. • ERIN DALE. 299 again into the depth of the green forests, through a road or path which presented every now and then ruts and abysses of mud, into which we sank nearly up to the axletree, and I began to appreciate feelingly the fitness of a Canadian wagon. On each side of this forest path the eye sought in vain to penetrate the labyrinth of foliage, and intermingled flowers of every dye, where life in myriad forms was creeping, hum- ming, rustling in the air or on the earth, on which the morning dew still glittered under the thick shades. From these woods we emerged, after five or six miles of travelling, and arrived at Spring- field, a little village we had passed through in the depth of winter — how different its appear- ance now! — and diverging from the road, a beautiful path along the' high banks above the river Credit, brought us to Erindale, for so Mr. M * * *, in fond recollection of his native country, has named his romantic residence. Mr. M * * * is the clergyman and magistrate of the district, beside being the principal farmer u I n n ii 300 WINTER STUDIES. and land proprietor. His wife, sprung from a noble and historical race, blended much sweet- ness and frankheartedness, with more of courtesy and manner than I expected to find. My re- ception was most cordial, though the whole house was in unusual bustle, for it was the 4th of June, parade day, when the district militia were to be turned out ; and two of the young men of the family were buckling on swords and accoutrements, and furbishing up helmets, while the sister was officiating with a sister^s pride at this military toilette, tying on sashes and arranging epaulettes ; and certainly, when they appeared — one in the pretty green costume of a rifleman, the other all covered with embroidery as a captain of lancers — I thought 1 had seldom seen two finer-looking men. After taking coffee and refreshments, we drove down to the scene of action. On a rising ground above the river which ran gurgling and sparkling through the green ravine beneath, the motley troops, about three or four hundred men, were marshalled — no. not mar- III < (, ERINDALE. 301 shalled, but scattered in a far more picturesque fashion hither and thither : a few log-houses and a saw-mill on the river-bank, and a little wooden church crowning the opposite height, formed the chief features of the scene. The boundless forest spread all around us. A few men, well mounted, and dressed as lancers, in uniforms which, were however, anything but uniform, flourished backwards on the green sward, to the manifest peril of the spectators ; themselves and their horses, equally wild, disorderly, spirited, undisciplined : but this was perfection compared with the infantry. Here there was no unifor- mity attempted of dress, of appearance, of move- ment ; a few had coats, others jackets ; a greater number had neither coats nor jackets, but ap- peared in their shirt-sleeves, white or checked, or clean or dirty, in edifying variety ! Some wore hats, others caps, others their own shaggy heads of hair. Some had firelocks ; some had old swords, suspended in belts, or stuck in their waistbands ; but the greater number shouldered sticks or umbrellas. Mrs. M * * * told us iif M I !- ' li ', I t , il ! I 1 i: ! l!l 302 WINTER STUDIES. that on a former parade day she had heard the word of command given thus — " Gentlemen with the umbrellas, take ground to the right ! Gentlemen with the walking-sticks, take ground to the left !" Now they ran after each other, elbowed and kicked each other, straddled, stoop- ed, chattered ; and if the commanding officer turned his back for a moment, very coolly sat down on the bank to rest. Not to laugh was im- possible, and defied all power of face. Charles M. made himself hoarse with shouting out orders which no one obeyed, except, perhaps, two or three men in iht front; and James, with his horse- men, flourished their lances, and galloped, and ca- pered, and curveted to admiration. James is the popular storekeeper and postmaster of the village, and when, after the show, we went into his ware- house to rest, I was not a little amused to see our captain of lancers come in, and, taking off his plumed helmet, jump over the counter to serve one customer to a " pennyworth of tobacco," and another to a " yard of check." Willy, the younger brother, a fine young man, who had been our EIIINDALE. 303 cavalier on the field, assisted ; and half in jest, half in earnest, I gravely presented myself as the j)urcha8er of something or other, which Willy served out with a laughing gaiety and unem- harrassed simplicity ']uit'^ delightful. We re- turned to sit down to a plain, plenteous, and excellent dinner ; everything on the table, the wine excepted, was the produce of their own farm. Our wine, water, and butter were iced, and everything was the best of its kind. The parade day ended in a drunken bout and a riot, in which, as I was afterwards informed, the colonel had been knocked down, and one or two serious and even fatal accidents had oc- curred ; but it was all taken so very lightly, so very much as a thing of course, in this half- civilised community, that I soon ceased to think about the matter. The next morning I looked out from my win- dow upon a scene of wild yet tranrjuil loveliness. The house is built on the edge of a steep bank, (what in Scotland they term a scaur,) perhaps a hundred feet high, and descending precipitously , .1 i h'lt ! ii 'I i ^AlW 304 WINTER STUDIES. to the rapid river.* The banks on either side were clothed with overhanging woods of the sumach, maple, tamarask, birch, in all the rich yet delicate array of the fresh opening year. Beyond, as usual, lay the dark pine-forest ; and near to the house there were several groups of lofty pines, the original giant-brood of the soil ; beyond these again lay the " clearing." The sky was without a cloud, and the heat in- tense. I found breakfast laid in the verandah : excellent tea and coffee, rich cream, delicious hot cakes, new-laid eggs — a banquet for a king ! The young men and their labourers had been out since sunrise, and the younger ladies of the house were busied in domestic affairs ; the rest of us sat lounging all the morning in the veran- dah ; and in the intervals of sketching and read- * In this river the young sportsmen of the family liad speared two hundred salmon in a single night. The salmon-hunts in Canada are exactly like that de- scribed so vividly in Guy Mannering. The fish thus caught is rather a large species of trout than genuine salmon. The sp'jrt is iPost exciting. ERINDALE. 305 ing, my kind host and hostess gave me an account of their emigration to this country ten years ago. Mr. M. was a Protestant clergyman of good family, and had held a considerahle Hving in Ireland ; but such was the disturbed state of the country in which he resided, that he was not only unable to collect his tithes, but for several years neither his own life nor that of any of his family was safe. They never went out unarmed, and never went to rest at niglit with- out having barricadoed their house like a for- tress. The health of his wife began to fail under this anxiet\ and at length, after a severe struggle with old feelings and old habits, he came to the determination to convert his Irish property into read\ money and emigrate to Canada, with four tine ons from seven to seven- teen years old, and one little darq-hter. Thus you see that Canada has become an asylum, not only for those who cannot pay tithes, but for those who cannot get them. Soon after his arrival, he purchased eight hundred acres of land along the banks of the mpl'' 'I I i: ^;: I? !t \ ■ :K Hi : m 306 WINTER STUDIES. r'i f I f'. Credit. With the assistance of his sons and a few labourers, he soon cleared a space of ground for a house, in a situation of great natural beauty, but then a perfect wilderneds ; and with no other aid designed and built it in very pretty taste. Be- ing thus secure of lodging and shelter, they proceeded in their toilsome work — toilsome, most laborious, he allowed it to be, but not unrewarded ; and they have now one hundred and fifty acres of land cleared and in cultiva- tion ; a noble barn, entirely constructed by his sons, measuring sixty feet long by forty in width ; a carpenter's shop, a turning-lathe, in the use of which the old gentleman and one of his sons are very ingenious and effective ; a forge; extensive outhouses; a farmyard well stocked; and a house comfortably furnished, much of the ornamental furniture being con- trived, carved, turned, by the father and his sons. These young men, who had received in Ire- land the rudiments of a classical education, had all a mechanical genius, and here, with all their energies awakened, and all their physical and ERINDALE. 307 mental powers in full occupation, they are a striking example of what may be done by activity and perseverance ; they are their own architects, masons, smiths, carpenters, farmers, gardeners ; they are, moreover, bold and keen hunters, quick in resource, intelligent, cheerful, united by strong affection, and doating on their gentle sister, who has grown up among these four tall, manly brothers, like a beautiful azalia under the towering and sheltering pines. Then I should add, that one of the young men knows something of surgery, can bleed or set a broken limb in case of necessity ; while another kuows as much of law as enables him to draw up an agreement, and settle the quarrels and arrange the little difficulties of their poorer neighbours, without having recourse to the " attorney." The whole family appear to have a lively feeling for natural beauty, and a taste for natural history ; they know the habits and the haunts of the wild animals which people their forest domain ; they have made collections of minerals and insects, and have " traced each herb and i I fc vx*- If i *' : i a ' f ? 1 <■ ' 308 WINTER STUDIES. i I. flower that sips the silvery dew." Not only the stout servant girl, (whom I met running about with a sucking-pig in her arms, looking for its mother,) and the little black boy Alick ; — but the animals in the farmyard, the old favou- rite mare, the fowls which come trooping round the benignant old gentleman, or are the pecu- liar pets of the ladies of the family, — the very dogs and cats appear to me, each and all, the most enviable of their species. There is an atmosphere of benevolence and cheerfulness breathing round, which penetrates to my very heart. I know not when I have felt 80 quietly — so entirely happy — so full of sympa- thy— 80 light-hearted — so inclined to shut out the world, and its cares and vanities, and " fleet the time as they did i' the golden age."" In the evening it was very sultry, the sky was magnificently troubled, and the clouds came rolling down, myigling, as it seemed to me, with the pine tops. We walked up and down the verandah, listening to the soft melancholy cry of the whip-poor-will, and watching the evolu- ' ,-• ERINDALE. 309 tions of some beautiful green snakes of a per- fectly harmless species, which were gliding after each other along the garden walks ; by degrees a brooding silence and thick darkness fell around us ; then the storm burst forth in all its might, he lightning wrapped the whole horizon round in sheets of flame, the thunder rolled over the forest, and still we lingered — lingered till the fury and tumult of the elements had subsided, and the rain began to fall in torrents ; we then went into the house and had some music. Charles and Willy had good voices, and much natural taste ; and we sang duets and trios till supper-time. We again assembled round the cheerful table, where there was infinite laugh- ing— the heart's laugh — and many a jest sea- soned with true Irish gallantry and humour; and then the good old gentleman, after discuss- ing his sober tumbler of whisky-punch, sent us all with his blessing to our rest. Mr. M. told me, that for the first seven ox I) / ;' 1 V ■! i i; t'.mm\ 310 WINTER STUDIES. ■i * \\> •r '^'i i' j : , .f ! j: ■' ■j eight years they had all lived and worked toge- ther on his farm ; but latterly he had reflected that though the proceeds of the farm afforded a subsistence, it did not furnish the means of in> dependence for his sons, so as to enable them to marry and settle in the world. He has there- fore established two of his sons as storekeepers, the one in Springfield, the other at Streetsville, both within a short distance of his own resi- dence, and they have already, by their intelli- gence, activity, and popular manners, succeeded beyond his hopes. I could perceive that in taking this step there had been certain prejudices and feelings to be overcome, on his own part and that of his wife : the family pride of the well-born Irish gentleman, and the antipathy to anything like trade, once cherished by a certain class in the old country — these were to be conquered, be- fore he could reconcile himself to the idea of his boys serving out groceries in a Canadian village; but they were overcome. Some lin- gering of the " old Adam" made him think it ERINDALE. 311 necessary to excuse — to account for this state of things. He did not know with what entire and approving sympathy I regarded, not the foolish national prejudices of my country, but the honest, generous spirit and good sense through which he had conquered them, and provided for the future independence of his children. I inquired concern'ug the extent of his parish, and the morals and condition of his parishioners. He said that on two sides the district under his charge might be considered as without bounds, for, in fact, there was no parish boundary line between him and the North Pole. He has frequently ridden from sixteen to thirty miles to ofBciate at a marriage or a funeral, or baptize a child, or preach a sermon, wherever a small congregation could be col- lected together ; but latterly his increasing age rendered such exertion difficult. His parish church is in Springfield. When he first took the living, to which he was appointed on his ^ ■■' ill If.: :| 'I ■ '